Downtown business owners are back to pushing security cameras. It’s still a terrible idea. (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4.) #
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
-
Archive for Sideblog »
Just the other day a UVa student came this close to being tossed out of school because he was recorded by a snoop camera on the corner saying something politically incorrect.
What are those merchants doing recording the private conversations of passers-by and sharing them with authority? How long would it be before downtown merchants – who clearly care nothing about people’s privacy – want snoop-ability equal to what the corner has?
IMO people who are willing to be under surveillance when they leave their home do not deserve the freedoms our constitution provides.
They should be required to buy a one-way ticket to GB, the mother nation way ahead of us murdering privacy. The Brits have more than 4 million spy cameras, and more every day.
Very useful for automatic writing and mailing of citations for not fetching your empty rubbish can soon enough on trash day.
Rules are rules, especially to those who dream of enforcing rules. More than we might think have that dream. Tyranny, after all, is the guiding principle of one of the best selling books in the history of the United States, a book many swear by – the OT.
Once upon a time nearly all Americans had a passion for privacy and independence. Now the majority of us are sheep, and that’s so sad.
My guess is that the Downtown Mall Merchants would like to get this ball rolling before school lets out and the marauding bands of junior gangbangers start up their usual summer shenanigans mugging and assaulting people.
Yeah, but that wasn’t on the Downtown Mall. They pushed for cameras when that started…but not in the locations where crime was taking place. It was a fig leaf.
Yeah, the camera’s really should go where the actual crime is taking place.
Fig leaves are pretty useless- I don’t even think there big enough to use as toilet paper. ;)
Technically, Little Big Bro, the student got into trouble (“almost tossed” is hyperbole, I think — no threat of Honor charges, so on what grounds and by what mechanism was he almost tossed?) because he called a fellow student a n*gger repeatedly. The fact that his hateful speech was recorded by a security camera wasn’t the cause for the trouble he got into; it was the mechanism by which the real cause, which was calling a fellow student a n*gger repeatedly, was recorded and preserved.
May you have cameras and microphones recording your every move and utterance so your happiness will be complete.
Whatever happened to “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me?”
That’s how people with any self-respect behave. Now we are cursed with thin-skinned wimps, cowards, and whiners.
While I agree that surveillance cameras suck, you can’t be serious regarding your kindergartenesque idiom about sticks and stones. You really don’t see a difference between someone getting called a poopiehead on the playground and the incident on the Corner? It’s the year 2010, not 1957. People with self-respect don’t allow themselves to be degraded in the street by ignorant racists, and according to our society’s “rules,” they don’t have to.
There’s no way in hell that if you were the one in that situation, you would have turned to your aggressors and said “Nanny-nanny boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo,” or the like, because you know they would immediately beat you to sleep.