The City of Flint, Michigan is seeking sponsorship…for its police surveillance cameras. For a mere $30,000 the Midwestern City will plaster the name and logo of an advertiser across one of its police surveillance camera boxes. The advertising space on the boxes comes mounted on a telephone pole and complete with a blue light flashing 24/7 to get would-be perp’s and potential customer’s attention. For those unwilling or unable to cough up the $30K, the City will also accept smaller sums to be prorated in the form of smaller ads spread across the boxes, similar to the advertising on NASCAR vehicles.
Flint, the hometown of General Motors, has suffered terribly from the decline of America’s largest automobile manufacturer, as documented in Michael Moore’s famous debut Roger & Me. The surveillance boxes reflect not only the poverty now rampant in this once flourishing industrial cradle of the Midwest, but the eroded tax base of a City that has to resort to one of the basest forms of capitalism to fund its policing. I just wonder who would advertise on one of these boxes. One would have to figure that the target demographic here would be people most concerned with being caught by one. Perhaps a Bail Bonds Company would be a good fit to add to the feeling of absolute civic collapse in this tragic Michigan community.
You can takepart in curbing the use of intrusive surveillance equipment by logging onto and supporting the American Civil Liberties Union.
LINKS:
M Live: Flint seeks sponsors for police surveillance; some question whether its appropriate
CATEGORIES: Human Rights
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Surveillance Cameras are a great help for security of the city. Why did they have to spend so much money that they obviously can’t afford to spend, though? There are security companies where that is much more affordable.
You have to admit that Flint Mayor Don Williamson can be pretty entertaining. If only he were an oddball character on a sitcom, or a colorfully corrupt small-town mayor on The Sopranos or something. Sadly, he’s in charge of a city that desperately needs competent leadership.
Flint has made the national news recently for all the wrong reasons. First there was the baggy pants “crack down.” Now this adopt-a-surveillance camera debacle. You may be asking yourself what Williamson can do next to maintain his lofty status as Clown Prince of American Mayors?
Well, how about if the leader of a city with the worst economy in the nation issues a press release offering advice on how to eliminate high gas prices and save the entire the U.S. economy?
“Mayor Don Williamson today urged Gov. Jennifer Granholm to ‘declare a state emergency’ and eliminate state gasoline taxes,” reports Joe Lawlor of The Flint Journal.
“Williamson, in a news release, also said the federal government should eliminate federal gasoline taxes, drill for oil in Alaska and offshore and create more oil refineries. Williamson said he believes gas prices will be reduced to $2.75 per gallon if those measure are taken, and the economy will improve.”
Apparently, the mayor is unaware of just how much state and federal money from these gas taxes flows into Flint. Or that a chorus of economists has already determined that these measures wouldn’t do much to lower prices and would probably hurt the economy in the long run.
But hey, given President Bush’s track record, Williamson just might find a sympathetic ear in the White House.
http://www.flintexpats.com
While it’s virtually impossible to prove a negative, such as ’surveillance cameras prevent crime’, it is documented that security cameras are very helpful in solving crime. As one poster said, criminals just aren’t that bright. And today’s surveillance systems are compact, can be hidden away, and have the ability to record an incident with crystal clear playback. The days of the old convenience store photos as we’ve all seen on the news are thankfully over and gone. Why spend that much for a system, when there are obvious alternatives available on the market?
eos Surveillance
eossurveillance@gmail.com
http://nowyoucansee.com
How about giving that $30k to a new police officer as a salary instead of a useless blue box? Slap the ad space on the cop cars and call it good.
Recienty in the Flint journal there was a artical about the city of Flint wanting a pan/tilt zoom camera instead of a still camera which they paid $30,000 for.
The amount of money spent on the first camera should have bought
several with those features. If someone approached the cable company for free use of internet to hook up the camera and I think that a company would donate the hook up for free advertising and companies such as ours ABS Spy supply would donate a pan/tilt/zoom
camera of our choice to be installed by others, and have it so not only the police, who said they do not sit and watch it but so anyone with the IP address could log in and watch live at any time.
All we would want is the publicity and advertising just like the cable co and instulation co would want.
I just basically wanted to say……… one of the cameras was donated the other was not. Second of all, I live right by there and can see the camera flashing in my back window. We use to hear gun shots and then sirens probably several times a day. Now its about maybe 2-3 times a week, if its a bad week. There was a few weeks that there was nothing. It has helped! And as far as the comment about the police officer job ….. If every city of Flint employee knocked off $1 off every person hourly pay….WOW!! that would be another job maybe 2. So if we use our brain before saying stuff like that…. It would work out!