South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog

Officials in Columbia, S.C. are planning to install surveillance cameras county-wide in "high crime areas."

The goal is to place surveillance cameras in dangerous areas so criminals don't have anywhere to hide.

At a news conference Tuesday, officials said similar programs have worked in other areas and it can work in Richland County, too.

"The best neighbor is a nosey neighbor. This system becomes an additional nosey neighbor," Sam Davis with the Columbia City Council said.

Now, where do you suppose the "high crime areas" are? This would mean downtown? Predominantly low income or black neighborhoods?

I have a hard time understanding why every citizen would not be up in arms over the mention of the police placing surveillance cameras in public areas. The day will soon come when every moment of every day we are being watched by the government. A simple google search reveals the following:

Hillsborough County, Florida, Sheriff's Office installs cameras in high crime areas.
Police in Lafayette, Louisiana, force business owners to install cameras.
Police in San Francisco install cameras in high crime areas.
Baltimore police install cameras in high crime areas.
Utica, N.Y. jumps on the band wagon, along with
Washington, D.C., New York city, Dallas, San Diego, Austin, Boston, Louisville KY, and the list goes on.

Mass-surveillance advocates ask, if you are walking down the street in a public place, do you really have an expectation of privacy? And the answer, of course, is no. Not legally and not practically, but they are asking the wrong question. Do we want to live in a world where the only time we are not being watched by our government is when we are in our own home, and possibly not even then?

Another aspect of this is where the cameras are being placed now - in "high crime areas." Meaning, cameras are not being placed in the neighborhood of the persons in power. They are being placed in primarily ethnic neighborhoods, where people have less of a voice or power to prevent it, but it will not stop here and it will spread.

We need only look to London, England, which now has about 4.2 million cameras on its streets, which have cost billions of pounds and yet have not had any significant impact on crime, as an example of where this will take us.

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For some time now, the city of Myrtle Beach has been working on plans to end the Memorial Day Harley Davidson rally and "black bike week" the week after the Harley rally. In June of this year, the city passed a 3-million dollar property tax increase, to fund anti-rally efforts. Last month at a city council meeting to discuss the anti-rally campaign, supporters of the bike rally were told by Myrtle Beach mayor John Rhodes, "If you don't like it, I'd leave."

Myrtle Beach does not sponsor any motorcycle events, and cannot simply order the rally not to come next May. So, the plan is to do everything possible to harass the motorcyclists and vendors in an attempt to force them out. The proposals so far include new laws declaring unpermitted rallies and events to be public nuisances, creating a midnight curfew, closing bars at 2 am, requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets (not a requirement under state law), towing and impounding all motorcycles that do not meet noise standards, checkpoints where motorcycles will be monitored for noise, and traffic diversion such as barriers and closed streets.

The city will call offenses "infractions" rather than criminal offenses - an "administrative hearing system" could be implemented to deal with "civil punishments" for infractions. Business owners or persons who sponsor rally events that "require a heightened law enforcement response" could be held liable for the city's expenses. Business owners and property owners may be required to install video cameras or even hire guards to enforce new parking lot ordinances.

Myrtle Beach is my home, and this is an embarrassment to me. Our city is saying that we cannot tolerate diversity, if the rally does not leave we will pre-meditatedly violate the civil rights of motorcyclists and business owners, and we will not permit anyone to speak in dissent. I sincerely hope that the rally will come in May of 2009, and that these ridiculous measures that have been proposed will cost the city more than they bargained for in litigation.

Welcome bikers.

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John Wesley Hall recommends that we all read Thomas Paine's Common Sense and then the Declaration of Independence.

A public defender gives us the president's speech from the movie Independence Day.

Joseph Galloway at McClatchy newspapers writes about how both presidential candidates are celebrating Independence Day by gutting the Fourth Amendment and voting to extend the FISA Act complete with amendments granting immunity to "the telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love."

Sentencing Law and Policy points out the irony of celebrating liberty in the country that leads the world in incarceration rates.

Mark Bennett notes the significance of the Declaration of Independence on current events; the indictment of King George in the Declaration could easily describe the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Simple Justice is less than sanguine about the coming year; and

Jon Katz reminds us that "July 4 is meaningless without an ongoing struggle for civil liberties. Now is the time to join that struggle."

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In a conversation sure to interest none of our readers except fellow bloggers, Sentencing Law and Policy, Simple Justice, and CrimLaw discuss the relationships between lawprof blogs and the "practical blawgosphere."

Greenfield's chief complaint seems to be that the lawprof's in general ignore the practitioner blogs, not linking to them and not engaging in dialogue when issues arise that both groups blog about, such as the Heller decision last week. Doug Berman responds at Sentencing Law and Policy that he has not seen such a great divide between lawprofs and practioner's blogs - in fact the blawgosphere seems to be a "terrific cyber-meeting-space for the academy and the bar (as well as the bench and law students and non-lawyers)."

On the one hand, I agree with Prof. Berman - one thing I love about the criminal blawgosphere is the "meeting" of many different types of lawyers and non-lawyers with shared interests in criminal law, whether academic or practical. I spend a few hours every day reading lawblogs of both types. On the other hand, Prof. Berman took the bait in a sense, as Greenfield also pointed out in his post that the only time lawprofs show up in the practical blawgosphere is when they are criticized and feel the need to respond.

At the heart of the issue seems to be recognition - who links to who in their blog posts, recognizing the other's ideas and building on them. Lawprofs don't often comment on practitioner's blogs, although practitioners often comment on lawprof's blogs. More often than not, lawprofs are commenting directly on appellate opinions, whereas practitioners are commenting on everything under the sun. If we are commenting on appellate opinions, it makes sense to also link to lawprof's opinions on the opinions because they are, after all, the academics. The practical blawgosphere's focus is usually commenting on daily life in the trenches, how the appellate opinions affect our work, and commentary on a wide variety of topics that impact the practice of law.

Although we would like to hear from the lawprofs on the topics we discuss, and would like recognition from time to time since, after all, academia is a wasted effort without the reality of the daily practice of law that it helps to shape, it doesn't always make sense for lawprofs to get involved in conversations from the practical blawgosphere. And, I don't see a problem with lawprofs getting but not giving recognition for excelling in an area (blogging) that is primarily academic in nature anyway.

Prof. Berman asks "if readers generally see relative harmony or a big divide between bloggers in the academy and in the bar?" I think harmony when you step back and look at the blawgosphere as a whole, but a big divide if you look at it in terms of reciprocity and recognition.

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