Gov. Kathy Hochul introduced Tuesday that each subway automobile could have two cameras.
Dennis A. Clark
Subway cams are such a no brainer that even Gov. Kathy Hochul, usually so hesitant to offend the pro-criminal left, is on board. However after all the New York Civil Liberties Union nonetheless squawks.
Embedding 13,000 new surveillance cameras on MTA subway vehicles (too unhealthy it’ll take three years) can solely assist lure again crime-conscious straphangers. And the $3.5 million value (plus $2 million that the feds will cowl) is a drop within the sea of pink ink that's MTA’s funds.
Stats present subway riders usually tend to expertise crime now than pre-pandemic; the cameras will assist flip that round, even when solely as a result of they enhance ridership — which all by itself reduces crime.
Too unhealthy Hochul invoked “Large Brother” in saying the transfer. Cue the anti-surveillance naysayers to pipe up.
The NYCLU whined that the town already holds “tens of hundreds surveillance cameras and there’s no proof this large enlargement of subway cameras will enhance security.” Then it tweeted: “Actual public security comes from investing in our communities, not from omnipresent authorities surveillance.”
Cranky technophobe Albert Fox Cahn slammed “surveillance theater” that places New Yorkers in danger and is “ripe for abuse by the NYPD,” fuming, “We deserve higher than digital cease and frisk.”
Fox Cahn (with AOC’s help) helped kill the NYPD’s robotic Digidog experiment final 12 months over phony privateness issues.
Come on: Nobody has a proper to privateness in public. Videocams (together with the non-public ones which can be in all places) are a fundamental fashionable security measure. And subway ridership nonetheless down 40% is a big risk to the MTA’s solvency — and thus to the town’s survival.
Now, if solely Hochul would dare to face up in opposition to the extremists on different no-brainers, beginning with demanding actual fixes to the no-bail regulation.
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