OH FUCK RIGHT OFF!

I just read this over at the montreal city weblog (put the URL into the box at Systran for a not so very bad [ie: shit] translation). If you're lazy and don't feel like clicking the link the gist of the MUC Police's view is this: We don't care if cameras violate privacy, we don't even really give a shit if the provincial watch dog thinks we broke the rules of using them, who cares if the people saying that the cameras are effective are the people using them and not an independent body, fuck you.

Through out this whole discussion there has been no mention of where the drug dealers that the police claim they have cleared out have gone. Miami? Laval? I'd guess not. Hell I don't have to guess, because I can tell you. They've gone to the parks and back alleys of my neighborhood.

I've talked about this before, and based on how pissed off I am now, I'd bet you my left leg that I'll talk about it again. This is the bit that really pisses me off. The area that they have driven them out of is a very urban, mostly (but not totally) commercial district with lots of good sight lines and with nice wide streets that the police can see down easy (hence the cameras being feasible). The areas they have driven them into are more residential in nature, with narrower streets, with parks where kids play (daycares, stay at home parents like me, school trips etc etc).

Look, get rid of the drug dealers, get the junkies new needles, hell attach a sharps box to every fucking lamp pole, but please don't pretend that surveillance equals enforcement. Also, and I've used this analogy before, driving the drug dealers out of one neighborhood is like squeezing on a balloon, all that air goes somewhere... it's more like herding than policing.

I think I feel a series of angry e-mails and phone calls coming on.