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SFPD obtained live access to business camera network in anticipation of protest
- sidewndr46 3y agoAny complaints should be directed at the oversight board that granted an ordinance allowing this. Police men are logically expected to use the tools given them to do their job most effectively.
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoThe job of police is not to monitor and suppress constitutionally protected rights, such as those to free public expression, gathering and protest.
- sidewndr46 3y agoThe police are agents of the government. Police pretty obviously are there to protect the government from the citizens. Not the other way around.
- the_only_law 3y agoThen what the fuck do you think some “oversight board” is going to do?
- geodel 3y agoAlso protect citizens from other citizens. I don't for a second believe that all weak and strong citizens live happily together if there were no police.
- sidewndr46 3y agoIn the US this is blindingly false. The police have absolutely zero obligation to protect you or your property. This is affirmed by multiple supreme court cases, including cases where the police actively destroyed people's property and at least one case their home.
- lesuorac 3y agoI think you're going about that on the wrong angle; not that unnecessary willful destruction of property is good. But if police are present they have no requirement to stop a crime [1]. [1]: https://gothamist.com/news/city-argues-nypd-had-no-special-duty-to-protect-subway-hero-from-madmans-rampage https://gothamist.com/news/city-argues-nypd-had-no-special-d...
- aftbit 3y agoWhile I wholeheartedly agree, this is a very modern and localized viewpoint. In most places and times, the job of the police was exactly to protect the ruling classes from uprising by the underclasses. For historical reasons if nothing else, protests make them very nervous. If you doubt this... then just read some history of labor rights in the world. Absolutely horrifying things were done by the law in the name of suppressing unionization all around the US and abroad. Plus, some protests turn ugly. We saw this in Seattle and elsewhere during the BLM protests. Some protestors engage in property crimes and violence, granting an air of legitimacy to a strong police response.
- mrguyorama 3y agoWhich is great fun when we also know that police don plain clothes, pretend to be part of these protests, and incite violence and rioting.
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoYes, but I am referring to the content of TFA, and the GP. San Francisco PD is supposed to abide by these strictures, and if they do not, we have a reckoning due aa a society.
- chatmasta 3y agoI agree with you, but this is a weak argument, because the police aren't suppressing any right of expression by monitoring protests. They may be having a chilling effect by effectively discouraging protesters to attend, but they are not actively suppressing any identifiable freedoms.
- ccooffee 3y agoSCOTUS has repeatedly considered the "chilling effect" of government policies to be sufficient to strike down government policies. Here's a long article from MTSU about the history of the "chilling effect" on First Amendment jurisprudence: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect tl;dr: having a "chilling effect" is, according to SCOTUS, often (but not always) the same thing as "actively suppressing" freedom of speech.
- ROTMetro 3y agoThe Supreme Court has held that anonymous speech is a huge part of the First Amendment as non-anonymous speech has a pretty chilling effect. With a surveillance state you are taking away the 'anonymizing' effect people felt of being in a crowd, that they could speak without being singled out.
- diebeforei485 3y agoIt is their job to (1) protect the protestors from physical harm, and (2) to prevent the protests from getting out of hand like what happened in June 2020.
- vkou 3y agoIt's weird how 'Fix the problems that are being protested' is not an option on the table. The answer to 'The police are indiscriminate and unaccountable in their use of violence against the public' always seems to be 'Employ even more indiscriminate and unaccountable violence against the public.' It's almost like that's the only response these institutions are capable of.
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoThis is not, in practice, what they do. In reality, they tend to use overwhelming force with dubious justification (if any), escalate situations via techniques such as kettling of protestors, and arrest/brutalize people expressing their disapproval of the above. There are many instances where police use violence on nonviolent protestors, so how does that protect them from physical harm?
- titzer 3y agoThere was a time when citizens had some civic awareness and would push back against things that are obvious violations of constitutional rights. But that time has passed; now everybody's "just doing their job". Uh huh. "Just following orders." Which, incidentally, is not a defense.
- perihelions 3y ago- "The SFPD was able to seek live monitoring as a result of the controversial September 2022 temporary ordinance that authorized police to receive live access to non-city security cameras for a host of reasons, including to monitor so-called “significant events.” This temporary camera ordinance, which passed as a 15-month pilot, was vigorously opposed by community and civil liberties organizations, including EFF..." Discussed at the time, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32954926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32954926 ("San Francisco police can now watch private surveillance cameras in real time", 170 comments)
- jeffbee 3y agoSomeone make a convincing case that I should be concerned about this.
- titzer 3y agoOh, don't be. It's not your rights they're after, just catching double-plus-ungood guys...you know PEDOPHILES and CHILD PORNO and SOMETHING ELSE SCARY.
- EA-3167 3y agoI always ask this, I've been around for decades of pearl clutching and doomsaying, and the dystopia never arrives. "This technology could be used to blah blah blah," but is it actually used that way? No one ever seems to have information about non-hypotheticals and I'm tired of slippery slope hysteria.
- mschuster91 3y ago> "This technology could be used to blah blah blah," but is it actually used that way? For one, you're falling towards the "preparedness paradoxon". But much worse: Yes, we absolutely have examples in the real world just how fucked up surveillance can get. The GDR's Stasi for example tracked people, just using people instead of technology, to an insane degree. Erich Mielke would openly drool in his grave if he knew just how powerful technology has become. In recent times, look at China and their "social credit" score. Don't believe for a single second the US is unable to sink that low. Even decades-old stuff believed to be safe can be struck down with the stroke of a pen of the Supreme Court. Get your expectations codified in a constitutional amendment, or be prepared to literally have to fight for your expectations. Abortion was just the beginning.
- diebeforei485 3y ago[flagged]
- gxs 3y agoThis is a bit of a false dichotomy. It's possible to both be (efficiently) "tough on crime" while simultaneously affording people the right to privacy.
- diebeforei485 3y agoThere is no expectation of privacy in public spaces.
- drewbeck 3y agoIs there any surveillance that you think is too much, or do you think it's all worth it if it helps fight "crime"?
- diebeforei485 3y agoI certainly don't want cameras inside my own house or office. But surveillance of public spaces (including public transit) is a good thing. We need public spaces to be safe because they provide cultural, economic, social, and climate benefits. In the absence of safety, people retreat to their houses. And they drive instead of taking transit.
- nonrepeating 3y agoThis kind of thing has to be fought at the highest level, specifically, overturning (or otherwise neutralizing) Smith v. Maryland. That ruling began the greatest assault on the Fourth Amendment since the Civil War. Also, Maryland v. King. (What is it with Maryland, anyway?) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland Apologies to non-American readers, and acknowledgement that the US is not the whole world.
- JamesLeonis 3y ago"San Franciscans spend more and get less from their police department than most major California cities" [0] From the report: > [SFPD have] by far the highest costs per square mile patrolled of California’s six major-city police departments (Table 2). Meanwhile, the SFPD has the lowest rate and biggest decline in arrests per reported crime and crimes solved by police over the 2010-2020 decade, even as reported Part I felony offense rates rose (up 19%). > The SFPD’s low rate of clearing violent crimes compared to other police departments is especially worrisome. San Francisco’s reported rate of Part I “index” offenses (the four violent and three property felonies used as a standard measure of crime) is by far the highest of any major California city, yet SFPD arrests have dropped 41 percent by number and 60 percent per reported offense during this period. That crime rose and arrests fell while the SFPD’s budget and staffing expanded challenges conventional beliefs that more police mitigate crime. [0]: https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/san_franciscans_spend_more_get_less_from_their_police_dept.pdf https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/san_franciscans_...
- ncr100 3y agoIs that the reason why the SFPD needs access to the business camera network? Or does the SFPD need access to it because it is otherwise restricted from performing conventional policing acts? I thought that I heard political rhetoric, while living in SF for 20 years, about how the SFPD also is hamstrung, limited by local laws which prevent them from chasing certain suspects because they have a higher standard of that the alleged incident needs to meet before they can engage. It's not as simple as, "pay money get peace." At least that's what I observed.
- ok_dad 3y agoCops will always complain about constraints on their policing and investigations, but those constraints are there in order to protect people's rights in the eyes of the law. I can't say for certain every single rule or law constraining cops are good or helpful to that goal, but based on my experiences with humans in the past, I don't trust very powerful authority figures that say they just need a little bit more power to do their jobs effectively. I think that quickly turns into corruption.
- motohagiography 3y agoI'd rather know how the Union Square Business Improvement District’s (USBID) camera network operates as a single service with people monitoring it, where they can just hand over access to police. These para-municipal agencies seem pretty dystopian. The problem with this stuff is that it cuts both ways. You think you are protected by these surveillance schemes, but then your local government starts tolerating petty crimes like vandalism, auto theft, vagrancy, and shoplifting because it centralizes their role in "managing" (read: extracting value from) it, offering protection to favoured constituencies in exchange for support, and then when you want to shovel a tent off your property, paint over grafitti, or discourage a shoplifter, those cameras neutralize you because you can't take the risk of being charged because you actually have something to lose. Cameras don't stop criminals, they just neutralize law abiding residents from discouraging threats to themselves and their community.
- flangola7 3y agoThose do sound like things we should discourage. We didn't protest and disrupt police "sweeps" to just let business owners go and do it. Capital always gets the benefit of the doubt from the law, if they're worried about being charged with something, they're doing something wrong.
- alephnerd 3y agoI used to live on the border between USBID and Lower Nob Hill. On the side of the alley within the USBID the streets would be cleaned of litter, poop would be washed, and private security (off duty SFPD hired by the USBID) would monitor the neighborhood. On the side of the alley that wasn't within the USBID, trash would be dropped, you would see open PCP and Meth use, and poop on the street, and cops wouldn't respond unless a weapon was drawn. The distance between the two was 5-7 feet. The area within the USBID didn't change drastically compared to pre-pandemic, but the area outside the USBID basically collapsed. There are a lot of these invisible borders across San Francisco which townies and unhoused people can recognize.
- banannaise 3y agoSo instead of solving problems, they move the problems somewhere else. That seems like not a good solution? You can't just make the whole world a business improvement district.
- tlogan 3y agoI do no know if this is going to help or not. What is point of these cameras if they are not going catch the criminals? Eye glasses store I go to just got burglarized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWfJijiLkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWfJijiLkU In the middle of the day. Everything recorded but nothing.
- tristor 3y ago> In the middle of the day. Everything recorded but nothing. It's happening all over SF and several other major cities, but SF particularly. And it seems like nobody is interested in doing anything to stop it. It's truly ridiculous and it represents a complete breakdown of social mores.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThe DA was replaced with someone vocally pro-police. How come we haven't seen a reduction in crime?
- shuckles 3y ago1. What the hell does "vocally pro-police" even mean? How is DA Jenkins any more pro-police than DA Gascon (who used to be a cop himself)? 2. Most of the regulations which make the criminal justice system in California (and the United States) ineffectual come from state regulations and common law precedent. For example, the court system deemed that bail must be offered in almost all situations (even for high risk defendants) and be affordable, and an attempt to revise this judgment to allow DAs to detain repeat violent offenders was defeated by the unholy alliance of bail bond companies and the ACLU.
- AnishLaddha 3y agoI have literally not seen a single conference she has held without being flanked by sfpd officers. a key tenet of her campaign was rebuilding the relationship between the DA and sfpd. She supported every sfpd budget increase under her tenure and dropped charges on like the second sfpd cop to ever be charged by the city. her first major political move post appointment was backing a mayor/sfpd proposal to increase surveillance. not saying if this is good or bad, and i don't know enough about the bail system to have an opinion, but its bad faith to say that she is not pro police, or at least pro sf police
- ummonk 3y agoGiven the amount of opportunistic looting of shopping districts that has often used such protests as cover in the past, it's good that they were proactive about this, in case it happened again.
- chrsjxn 3y agoSFPD had a 6% clearance rate for all property crimes in 2020, with reports that it got lower since [1]. There are a lot of anecdotes, occasionally newsworthy, about SFPD watching theft happen and doing nothing about it [2]. SFPD also appears to have refused to assist the DA in arrests related to theft rings for political reasons [3]. It's noteworthy that SFPD chose to pursue such broad surveillance access for a protest of police violence. Their past record on theft and vandalism is an exceptionally flimsy justification. [1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/The-state-of-the-SFPD-in-8-charts-17280332.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/The-state-of-the-SFPD... [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-police-only-watch-as-burglary-16647876.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-po... [3]: https://sfist.com/2022/05/23/report-sfpd-refused-to-participate-in-quickly-burglary-ring-bust-boudin-had-to-rent-his-own-u-haul/ https://sfist.com/2022/05/23/report-sfpd-refused-to-particip...
- shuckles 3y agoSFPD’s staffing levels are also at historic lows (and much lower than UN averages) while the work required to investigate and prosecute crimes has increased due to the professionalization of policing (a lot more TPS reports but also valuable constraints on autonomy). Perceived aggregate activity being down isn’t particularly surprising. The U-Haul stunt was largely just a stunt. It was later revealed the DA’s office just didn’t get their paperwork right to organize evidence transport.
- chrsjxn 3y agoI feel like that just makes it worse (though I didn't know about the DA's office messing up the paperwork). Let's assume that understaffing and additional work required to close cases are the main causes for the low clearance rates. Monitoring a legal protest in case crimes are committed seems profoundly wasteful, compared to working to resolve crimes that actually happened. I don't envy SFPD. Trying to reduce crime in SF seems like a huge challenge that they are poorly equipped to solve, for many reasons. But the original comment in this thread is trying to justify surveillance here as preventing possible property crimes, and that just makes no sense to me.
- thelock85 3y agoMy friend and I often talk about the analogous situations between police officers and teachers in urban centers. Both really hard jobs that suffer with retention and recruitment. Both fraught with union agreements that make it really difficult to fire bad actors. But where the analogy breaks down is around funding vs performance & accountability. Poor crime stats are usually followed by a conversation around policies and lack of funds that hamper police activity, whereas poor test scores are usually followed by school closures, reduced salary negotiations, and state/federal oversight. It’s interesting that educators always get the blame and providing more resources is met with some version of “we already spend more than X”. But police often get sympathy and no push back for more resources even though US LEO get more funding than any other country and spends a greater % of GDP than most countries. (even in the face of massive police reform protests over the past decade). I hold the opinion that education produces greater positive network effects on society than incarceration does, so this disconnect is really mind-boggling.
- verall 3y ago> Both fraught with union agreements that make it really difficult to fire bad actors. In many states teachers are not allowed to bargain collectively and the unions have no power to prevent anyone's firing, and these states do not have better education outcomes, so I think for education at least we have to rule out the unions.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago"whereas poor test scores are usually followed by school closures, reduced salary negotiations, and state/federal oversight" Not in San Francisco. Whenever SF public schooling comes up in a f2f conversation, I ask people how much they think SFUSD spends per student per year. People's estimates are usually 1/3 to 1/2 of the actual figure: $22k per year. $1.1bn/year for ~50k students. About half of them can read+write at grade level. Same for math.
- shuckles 3y agoPolice funding is far more suspect to politics than school funding, which is usually set by a state-level formula. Voter support for school bond measures and the like is probably higher at a baseline than police or public safety measures.
- tempfortwitt90 3y agoIn 2020, I was in a parking lot in an SF Bay Area suburb. A guy parked his car in front of a store, and within 2 minutes the car was swarmed by 3 local police cars, gun drawn. The owner went back out to the car reluctantly. Turned out the plates were reported stolen, by clerical mistake (typo?) and the towns license plate scanners picked up the car when he got off the freeway. The parking lot we were located in was two stoplights from the highway, and took about 3 minutes to travel. They picked him up that fast and basically drove around til they found the car (assuming off a picture/video feed since stolen plates won't be on a car that matches the original cars description). That's when I knew we were definitely in a tracking nightmare most people don't even know about.
- brickfaced 3y agoI suppose it's only a tracking nightmare unless and until you're the victim of grand theft auto, or specific and tangible police abuse of this power.
- lesuorac 3y agoI believe you're looking at the situation incorrectly. An unoccupied car doesn't need to be swarmed with firearms. It's a car; its not going to shoot you. Its not great that the car was misidentified but the response by the police wasn't appropriate even if it was identified correctly. Tracking nightmare is not the real problem; it's the abuse of power.
- tempfortwitt90 3y agoWell, if you were the police officer responding to the call... You assume you're about to encounter a felonious car thief.
- lesuorac 3y agoSure, a felonious car thief that is visibly not in the car. Who are you shooting with your guns out, there's nobody there! They're not setting up a sting or a trap or anything; they're going straight for the kill. That's a problem.
- exabrial 3y ago[flagged]
- AnishLaddha 3y agohow about before doing that, sfpd starts doing basic stuff like foot patrols in targeted neighborhoods, dealer arrests, and bait cars? start working with primitive tools and then gain access to more advanced ones as you reach bottlenecks.