City Under Surveillance no Reduction in Crime

This is a letter I wrote to the City of Stockton and I did get a reply which is posted at the bottom and can be downloaded in its entirety.


According to an article written in 2007 titled “Dozens of new police cameras to watch over Stockton”, 44 surveillance cameras were going to be installed in parks, and intersections across the city, in addition to the already strong presence of security cameras in the downtown area.



As the crime gets worse in Stockton with one of the highest crimes rates in California per capita, already this year leading with 33 murders, and violent crimes happening daily—I see and feel no safer with these surveillance cameras. The police and others will most definitely say that the implementation of this vast network of security cameras has reduced crime and been a great asset to the city—I find this to to be a fallacy, and more fiction than reality.




I was walking through the park the other day near the federal building downtown and right in the middle of the park was a surveillance camera. Is the reason that there is a camera there because there is a large number of predominately African American's that congregate there, or is it because of the couple of drunk wino's? The point being, if there is a tactical reason for the camera to be there in that park, it is not serving its purpose, but I feel instead is being used by the police as tool to monitor and watch people who have every right to walk outside of their home and not have to feel that their privacy is being invaded under the guise of crime or some other issue.


According to the ACLU the right to express oneself not just through action, but also in the choice to stay still or “repose”, has been continually affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Chicago v. Morales, the court wrote that freedom to loiter for innocent purposes is part of the liberty protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . an individuals decision to remain in a public place of his choice is as much a part of his liberty. The idea being I should be able to walk through or sit at a park bench in our city and not have to worry about being under surveillance.


According to the Fourteenth Amendment even in public places a “person seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public”—a person is entitled to protection if a court finds he has a “reasonable expectation of privacy”. Going to a park or to the downtown water fountains there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. According to the ACLU (2007), video surveillance systems . . . infringe on the freedom of speech and association guaranteed by the First Amendment and threaten the anonymity and privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment and state constitutions.




Cameras do not belong in parks, or on every corner of movie theaters, or at places where children play in the water during the summer months, or around a hockey stadium, or at intersections, or any other public places within the city where citizens may expect a reasonable expectation privacy. It is incorrect for the city, the police, to justify spending money, and doing so by saying that this will reduce or resolve the crime that occurs in the city—because it has not. People still commit crimes in front of surveillance cameras all the time, just watch the news or read the newspaper.




The dilemma here is that without oversight and citizens of this city not being able to have access the policy and provisions set forth by the city governing the use of the cameras, there is no way to guarantee our rights that are created by the supreme law of the land the United States Constitution. According to the ACLU report of 2007 the city was supposed to have video cameras in public places that could pan, zoom and record-have surveillance cameras on public streets, and have regulations for retired police officers who monitor the cameras. I have not been able to find any public information about the policies of use anywhere and this should be information that falls under the California Public Records Act. States records held by the government are presumed open and available to the public; this could also be detrimental because in theory because surveillance footage is a record of data that is held by a public agency—if a person requested surveillance footage unless that footage related to a criminal investigation, Under the Act the video would most certainly be accessible to the public(ACLU, 2007). This could pose issues of privacy of others getting information to be used in nefarious ways etc.




There needs to be oversight that is done by another agency besides the police department to ensure that racial profiling is not occurring, that cameras are not being used to view peoples homes, or inside their homes—this type of surveillance would require a warrant or probable cause. This is another issue how does the police department pick and choose whom to watch under surveillance? Is it based upon their clothes, their demeanor, their haircuts, their cars, these are all valid questions that need to be answered. According the ACLU Stockton was considering adding even more cameras than what was disclosed in the report all under the guise of reducing and preventing crime.




I think we would be far better off taking the million plus dollars that were paid for these invasive surveillance cameras, and used the money to support the police departments GSET Unit, which goes after gang members and has an officer deputized who works with the FBI fugitive task force so that federal charges can be pursued against those whom continue to ravage the city—the money would have been better spent on putting more officers from the CPO idea which deploys officers to high crime areas and allows them not to have to answers calls for service but focus on high crime and trouble areas, and as well supplement Patrol if necessary. I feel funding these officers and making their teams bigger would be far more fruitful then what we have today—a bunch of technology that does not deter crime, potentially violates our rights, has no oversight, and only the police know the methodology they use to apply the technology.




I encourage all those whom are going to think I may be way off base to go on the internet Google scanstockton.com and listen to the daily 24 hour recorded scanner traffic and it will soon become apparent that there is a problem that the police are trying to win but are not being able to get control of it, not for lack of trying, but just because of the level of violence, access to drugs, and poverty. This city has its priority backwards we staff the downtown movie theater with full time bike officer, and there are cameras everywhere around that structure, but yet weekly fights happen, cars are stolen, burglarized, officers are assaulted and all in plain view of the ever watch eye of the surveillance camera. We have to the right to ask the city government if the right choices have been made for the citizens of this city. We also have the right to be able to have access to the policy to ensure that the use of these surveillance cameras are not being misused or abused.

City of Stockton CCTV Policy -