Do Surveillance Cameras Control Crime?
A response to the belief that surveillance cameras lead to greater security.
San Francisco, California has thousands of cameras in the city.(1) Yet, San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large.(2)
Oxapampa, Peru has almost no crime and is said to have the highest property values in all of Peru. There is a noticeable foreigner population, tourism, etc. When I was in Oxapampa for several months, I did not remember seeing a single surveillance camera, government or private.
It is not the number of surveillance cameras that determines whether or not crime occurs. It is the social culture. What does Oxapampa have that San Francisco doesn’t? A zero-tolerance policy toward crime.
I was told that the law of the land in Oxapampa is that if someone is caught stealing they are banished from the town forever and that if he or she returns they are killed and thrown in the river. I am not sure if this is the actual law but it is clear that this is the attitude of many.
Just prior to my arrival in Oxapampa, two men were arrested for stealing motorcycles. I believe that they were from out of the area. A crowd of over 200 people gathered in front of the police station and asked the police to hand over the two men. The police released the prisoners to the crowd, whereby the two men were beaten and dragged to the main plaza. The men were tied with rope to a post in the plaza and whipped from 4:00 in the afternoon until 5:00 in the morning (13 hours), when they were admitted to a hospital.
Initially the doctors refused to operate but someone later stepped in to save the men. The men were in critical care for weeks. These men are not likely to steal motorcycles in the area again. This event serves as a warning message to others in the town and to those in the region as to what to expect if they commit crimes.
A culture like this keeps crime low because the consequences for social transgression are severe.
The other side of the coin is to think about how we respond in community. There are basically 2 ways to address crime:
(1) insure opportunity for everyone to make an honest living, and
(2) hold people accountable for violating the rights of others (via law enforcement, community security committees, etc.)
As a community, we can ask the questions:
How do we provide care and opportunity?
And how should we respond to those who do not take advantage of opportunity and prey upon others in the community?
VILCABAMBA
In Vilcabama, Ecuador, where I live, we have many security problems to address.
Many do not trust the police and do not choose to report crimes to the police. This may be due to reports of police themselves committing crimes such as theft or bribery. Some locals that I know believe that some police officers are working with the gangs and cartels. Whether these opinions are substantiated or not, until we have confidence in a consistently honorable police force, there will be challenges with public trust.
In cases of gang-related crime, many victims keep quiet due to fear of reprisals from the gang. I have also spoken to local police officers who expressed fear of being targeted by gangs. It is this kind of cowardice/enabling behavior that allows gangs to run rampant.
I hear stories of the police not showing up to an emergency call. Or if they do show up, they often show up hours after the call was made. Many crime victims are disappointed with the lack of investigation and assistance by the police.
On the occasion that the police make an arrest, the suspect is frequently released shortly after being brought into custody, without charges nor consequences. Talking to the police, I was told that the law is structured so that it is difficult for the police to hold onto suspects.
If there are no consequences for crime, then criminals will not have respect for the law.
Whether we are dealing with non-responsive police officers or laws that favor criminality, our best way to increase community security is going to be organizing citizens to put an end to crime.
NATIONAL CRIME
A 2019 New York Times article, 4.300 cámaras de vigilancia en Ecuador: el sistema de inteligencia de China que se exportó al país, reports that in the year 2011, Ecuador installed 4,300 Chinese cameras as part of a national surveillance system called ECU-911.
Francisco Robayo, former director general of ECU-911 argued that ECU-911 has been responsible for a substantial drop in homicides and a nearly 13-percent drop in crime between 2017 and 2018. (3)
However, many years prior to the installation of the ECU-911 surveillance system, crime had been in a steady decline: “Ecuador once used to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world. However, since 2008, the rates of intentional homicide have been in consistent decline, reaching about 5.7 homicides per 100,000 people in 2018, down from a homicide rate of 18 reported in 2008.” (4)
“El Tejar is a neighborhood in Quito with one of the worst incidences of crime.
Lidia Rueda, a community organizer in El Tejar, pointed out the sites where the bodies of murdered women were found as she recently walked the steep, winding streets of the neighborhood where she has lived for thirty years. She added that drug traffickers move around freely, that muggings are common and that criminals break the bulbs of street lights to take advantage of the darkness.
Crime has not decreased even though ECU-911 cameras were placed at the base of the hill years ago. Rueda pointed to a pedestrian bridge down; where, she recounted, a man grabbed her and threatened her at knifepoint while another stole all her money. The 2014 assault happened right under a police camera, but no help arrived.
Rueda's experience illustrates the complex relationship many Ecuadorians have with cameras. Authorities claim that crime has been reduced, but anecdotes abound of how they don't work.
‘When there are cameras, they often don't work,’ said Rueda, age 61. It's also possible that no one is watching what they capture in that neighborhood.” (3)
An April 2022 interview with Anaís Córdova, part of the research team by the non-governmental organization Access Now, reports: “The first thing constantly argued is that video surveillance and all the surveillance systems of the ECU 911 — that is, of all the integrated systems that carry out surveillance in Ecuador — generate security. One of the clear conclusions of our study is that security does not depend on the number of cameras. There is no evidence that says that there will be greater citizen security as long as there are more cameras. There is no reduction in crime or prevention of violent deaths related to the number of cameras. What does exist is a persecution of environmental and human rights activists, which is justified by the idea that there will be more citizen security.”
“During and after the Correa government, the images of the ECU 911 have shown — and there are several news items that prove it — that information has been used above all to track people who were not sympathetic to the government of the time. For example, it is clear to us that video surveillance and cell phone sensors have been used to understand where environmental activists and defenders are located in Ecuador. Especially people who were very close to the ITT [referring to the Yasunidos collective, a citizen initiative that opposed [the] decision to exploit the oil in the Yasuní biosphere]. There was persecution there; there was also political persecution of people who were not in favor of the government.” (5)
There are now around 6,500 government surveillance cameras installed and operating in Ecuador. (6) Despite an expanded system with a couple thousand more cameras than the initial installation in 2011, crime has been on the increase in recent years.
TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNMENT POLICY ENCOURAGES CRIME
Since the Covid plandemic, governments around the world have been releasing criminals onto the streets from prison before they have finished their sentence. Over a million prisoners have been granted early release. (7)
A 2021 Wisevoter report states that crime rates have generally increased across the world due to the plandemic and related economic disruptions. (8)
Both in Ecuador and abroad, criminals are frequently released, not having been prosecuted.
Several years ago there was not many illegal guns in Ecuador and one wonders... who is letting the guns into the country?
In the recent Metastasis operation, executed by the Attorney General's Office, 39 people have been arrested, among them, Wilman Terán, President of the Judiciary; Pablo Ramírez, former anti-narcotics director of the National Police; and 37 other officials and former officials, including provincial judges, first level judges, prosecutors, experts, active police officers, penitentiary guards, and lawyers. The simultaneous raids and arrests took place starting December 13, 2023, in seven provinces in Ecuador.
This revealed a “criminal structure embedded at all levels of the State and directly linked to drug trafficking.” (9)
Is there a political decision to illegally traffic guns into the country and to tie the hands of the police so that prosecution is difficult?
And if the criminals operate without consequences, does this not further embolden them?
With more crime, will not citizens ask the government for more security?
And will not the government then bring in surveillance technology and build out SMART Cities to control the population?
These are serious questions to ponder, because they can help us get to the roots of the complex situation we find ourselves in.
Could government policy, then, be responsible for the rise in crime? And could this policy be intentional as it follows a pattern that can be observed throughout the world?
My personal conclusion is that SMART Cities and surveillance systems are being marketed to us as important for our security. However, this technology is for the security of the Technocrats, not us! (Technocracy = a social control system ruled through technology).
It is for controlling society. It is not for our safety.
MANIPULATED AGAIN
We, as a society, have recently come through the traumatic experience known as Covid-19, with its lockdowns, business closures, and widespread restrictions of our freedom, including mask mandates, travel prohibitions, and coercion of our health choices without informed consent.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream led by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies.[3,6,57] We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.
For the first time in history, presidents, governors, mayors, hospital administrators and national bureaucrats are determining medical treatments based not on accurate scientifically based or even experience based information, but rather to force the acceptance of special forms of care and “prevention”—including Remdesivir, use of respirators and ultimately a series of essentially untested messenger-RNA vaccines. For the first time in the history of medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully, but rather individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators.[23,38]
The media (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.), medical societies, state medical boards and the owners of social media have appointed themselves to be the sole source of information concerning this so-called “pandemic”. Websites have been removed, highly credentialed and experienced clinical doctors and scientific experts in the field of infectious diseases have been demonized, careers have been destroyed and all dissenting information has been labeled “misinformation” and “dangerous lies”, even when sourced from top experts in the fields of virology, infectious diseases, pulmonary critical care, and epidemiology. These blackouts of truth occur even when this information is backed by extensive scientific citations from some of the most qualified medical specialists in the world.[23] Incredibly, even individuals, such as Dr. Michael Yeadon, a retired ex-Chief Scientist, and vice-president for the science division of Pfizer Pharmaceutical company in the UK, who charged the company with making an extremely dangerous vaccine, is ignored and demonized. Further, he, along with other highly qualified scientists have stated that no one should take this vaccine.”
Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, April 22, 2022, Journal of Surgical Neurology International (10)
After the trauma of the Plandemic, we now face a global crime wave, which threatens to send us into another round of fear.
Problem-reaction-solution (PRS) is a simplified explanation of the Hegelian dialectic proposed by David Icke. The idea is that the government manipulates the population by introducing a problem and then using their own means to solve that problem. PRS involves three discrete, but interrelated phases.
(1) A problem is manufactured by a government or powerful group.
(2) The public reacts by asking that the government solve the problem.
(3) The government implements pre-planned “solutions” that serve the agendas of those in control.
Initially, dominant individuals, groups, and/or organizations covertly engineer or exploit a problem to legitimize the enactment of laws, rules, and restrictions. This technique is summed up by the Freemason motto 'Ordo Ab Chao' - “order out of chaos”. Problem-Reaction-Solution functions as a mechanism for constructing and exaggerating social problems to garner populist support for the implementation of societal controls.
Here is my theory:
Global government policy that encourages crime is intended to prepare populations for the stripping of their freedoms in order to justify implementing surveillance technology and SMART Cities. Put simply,
(1) Governments will create the conditions for the increase in crime.
(2) Crime will increase.
(3) Then governments will install SMART City technology, in order to control not just criminals – but all the people.
The plan from the beginning is to manipulate the population into accepting the slave conditions of Technocracy. (11) Modern Communist China is an example of a Technocracy.
If we see that local police are not responsive to crime or are corrupt...
If national governments are not solving the problem, but are creating it...
Then we only have ourselves and each other to put our communities in order.
For ideas on how we could respond conscientiously, please see the article, “How do we take responsibility for our own security?”
References
(1) Map reveals more than 2,700 surveillance cameras in San Francisco, February 2019: https://statescoop.com/map-reveals-more-than-2700-surveillance-cameras-in-san-francisco/
(2) Why San Francisco Is Nearly The Most Crime-Ridden City In The US, November 2021: https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-ridden-city-us
(3) 4.300 cámaras de vigilancia en Ecuador: el sistema de inteligencia de China que se exportó al país, April 2019: https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2019/04/24/nota/7300268/hecho-china-exportado-ecuador-aparato-vigilancia-estatal/
(4) From Ecuador to Kyrgyzstan: A Quieter Story of China’s Digital Belts and Roads, Dec. 2019: https://www.chinausfocus.com/finance-economy/from-ecuador-to-kyrgyzstan-a-quieter-story-of-chinas-digital-belts-and-roads
(5) Anaís Córdova: «Estamos viviendo bajo una constante videovigilancia en Ecuador», March 2022: https://es.globalvoices.org/2022/03/31/anais-cordova-estamos-viviendo-bajo-una-constante-videovigilancia-en-ecuador/
(6) Cámaras de Videovigilancia: https://www.ecu911.gob.ec/camaras-de-videovigilancia/
(7) Swift, targeted action to reduce prison population during COVID-19, global study reveals, March 2021: https://www.dlapiper.com/en-ca/news/2021/03/swift-targeted-action-to-reduce-prison-population-during-covid-19
(8) Crime Rate by Country: https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/crime-rate-by-country/#ecuador
(9) Wilman Terán, presidente de la Judicatura, entre 29 detenidos por presunta delincuencia organizada, December 2023: https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/politica/wilman-teran-detenido-operativo-fiscal-diana-salazar-delincuencia-organizada-nota/
Diana Salazar hace público el expediente del caso Metástasis en página web de la Fiscalía General, December 2023: https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/politica/caso-metamorfosis-delincuencia-organizada-wilman-teran-narcotrafico-delincuencia-diana-salazar-organizada-leandro-norero-consejo-de-la-judicatura-corte-nacional-de-justicia-diana-salazar-fiscalia-general-del-estado-nota/
El caso 'Metástasis' contra la corrupción y el narco suma ocho nuevos procesados en Ecuador, January 2024: https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/494550-ecuador-metastasis-procesado-corrupcion-narcotrafico
(10) Dr. Russell Blaylock Levels Bombshell Charges Against the Medical Establishment Alleging COVID-19 Fraud Corruption and Mass Murder, May 2022: https://greatmountainpublishing.com/2022/05/20/dr-russell-blaylock-levels-bombshell-charges-against-the-medical-establishment-alleging-covid-19-fraud-corruption-and-mass-murder/#more-5731
(11) A technocracy is a political entity ruled by experts (technocrats) that are selected or appointed by some higher authority.
Read more of the…
TECHNOCRACY SERIES
Do Surveillance Cameras Control Crime? (this article)
Surveillance Cameras in Vilcabamba
How do we Take Responsibility for our own Security?
How to Avoid and Eliminate the Beast System’s SMART Technology