. . . so then your 15-year-old will be shot in secret and not on the street corner. Is there some kind of new metric when it comes to drug dealers? Cory Booker talking about Newark’s new high-tech camera systems:
These are not your standard security cameras; these are high resolution, night vision capability, the ability to go over great distances, many miles in fact. Some of the cameras we have in the downtown district can read the tail numbers off of airplanes miles away at the airport. These are some of the highest, state of the art cameras, that have revolution capabilities, they can move around. They can focus in and read the name off an ID badge, pretty impressive technology.
. . .
We realize they’re such powerful tools; the more we can get up, the more we can undermine crime in communities and ultimately begin to make criminals realize if the do something they’re going to get caught, either through traditional policing methods, through cameras, or some of the other things we’re deploying. Once there’s that knowledge, you begin to have people not as confident carrying a gun, or doing something illegal out in broad daylight. And what happened in New York, we talked to a lot of the criminologists involved in that effort, was it got to a point where the brazenness of criminals, gang members, drug dealers, out in the streets was so undermined, that they eventually drove a lot of the efforts to deal these drugs completely away or indoors. Driving things underground takes away a lot of the violence that’s associated with drug dealings and narcotics. And we’ve realized the majority of our shootings are narcotics related. So if you drive the narcotics trade underground, and we still have narcotics divisions that deal with major investigations, but just by getting people off street corners, and stopping narcotics folks from carrying guns because they realize there’s a high cost in doing so. Eventually we’re going to hit a tipping point in Newark where we’re not just going to see the dramatic reductions that we’re having now, but just spectacular reductions that will give residents the sense of security that they deserve.
. . .
The other thing I notice, which is a good thing, but some people just think you’re displacing crime, is a lot of the high crime areas, we’ve put up cameras. The drug dealers have just gone away. Even today I had some residents come up to me and say they were so appreciative that their neighborhood that used to be plagued by drug dealing is now a lot clearer and cleaner. The cameras really help with that. That combined with law enforcement presence and enforcement can actually eradicate the problem or drive it very underneath where it doesn’t cause the public hazards the narcotics trade often does. [Emphasis added.]
So is this a move towards home delivery? Or an acknowledgment that drug dealers will never go away, but we can get to a point where they’re safely underground (like where, a basement?)?
Bruno and the Professor 