So Will It Actually Make Us Safer Or Is It Just A Way For You To Tweak The PBA?

It’s just ridiculous — naive and ridiculous! — that you don’t want to reduce the police department payroll because you’re afraid of a few stupid cameras:

Saying that “we live in a dangerous world” and people “want to have security cameras,” Mayor Bloomberg is making the case that New Yorkers need to get used to being watched.

“I do think that in this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you, you are very naïve,” he said during an appearance at London’s riverfront City Hall with the city’s mayor, Ken Livingstone.

Mr. Bloomberg went on to say that “we are under surveillance all the time,” and noted that the first thing the police department does when trying to solve a crime is collect surveillance footage from nearby stores and buildings.

. . .

“It’s just ridiculous,” Mr. Bloomberg said as a London officer pulled up an image of the mayor’s car from when it pulled into the neighborhood less than an hour earlier. “People who object to using technology — we have to pay either police officers or technology, and using a combination really lets you be much more efficient.”

After all, Hizzoner is good at obfuscating the real reasons behind all this supercool technology (maybe it’s the same with GPS in taxis?).