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Just a reminder: The T has a pretty comprehensive camera network

Guy tossing metal rod onto tracks

Too early to be practicing for the Olympic javelin toss.

For better or worse. But what it means is that if, oh, you're at Andrew on the Red Line and you decide it might make sense to throw some metal object onto the third rail and the T has to stop service so it can retrieve that item, chance are good Transit Police will pull a snap of you of one of the surveillance cameras, which should make it easier for them to find and arrest you.

So if, hypothetically, you know somebody with a light blue hoodie who might have done something like that around, oh, 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday, detectives are standing by at 617-222-1050 or you can text an anonymous tip to 873873.

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Comments

Didn't the city council vote against facial surveillance of criminals?

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No, they banned the use of technology that would identify someone based on a facial scan. Police are allowed to pull video of someone committing a crime.

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Yes, yes they are.

But even if they weren't, see above.

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I forget - are we in favor of or opposed to the placement of cameras in public areas? It seems people love to rail against them because the cops will send you to jail for smoking a bone but then people like them when they catch criminals do things that are bad.

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First off, this is just a weird thing to say:

...because the cops will send you to jail for smoking a bone...

Did you just get sucked through a wormhole from the year 1992?

But yeah - some people (even non-smokers!) worry a lot about the effects of increased social surveillance on civil liberties, and others give more weight to the ability of police to quickly identify people doing bad stuff. Most people probably are concerned about both things.

Welcome to non-homogonous humanity!

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But cameras don't stop the crime when it's happening or about to happen. More transit police humans needed.

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Cops prefer it when others do their job for them.

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That may be true (and if it is, it would make them no different from many other people), but I have to ask: How would *you* suggest the police identify suspects?

I know that 'd prefer to read news stories with quality pics/video, requesting assistance from the public, rather than jackboots kicking in doors at random.

If anything, I wish the police would post public RFIs like this a lot sooner than they usually seem to. It feels like we normally see posts like this about crimes that took place weeks, or even months ago, not days. I'm guessing that the potential for a major accident if this whacko tries this again increases the urgency.

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Neither do laws against theft, murder, or any other crime, should we abandon all tools that don’t prevent all crime?

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What if we put lasers in the cameras and hired thousands of people to monitor each one and make the firing decisions? I bet that would take a bite out of crime as "Ruff" would say.

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Every week 12 names are drawn from a lottery and given the trigger buttons. The names and addresses are public. No one has a way to determine who pulled the trigger.

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