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Post by Watchman on Feb 17, 2006 14:45:52 GMT -5
Houston Police Chief Wants Surveillance Cameras In Private Homes Orwellian telescreens will monitor your behavior
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | February 16 2006
The age of the telescreen is upon us as surveillance cameras that festoon our streets, shopping malls and airports are now moving into our private homes as the panopticon prison is erected.
The Associated Press reports,
"HOUSTON Houston's police chief is suggesting putting surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets and even private homes."
"Chief Harold Hurtt today said it's another way of combatting crime amid a shortage of officers.
Scott Henson with the American Civil Liberties Union calls Hurtt's proposal to require surveillance cameras as part of some building permits -- "radical and extreme."
In the meantime, Homeland Security grants are being used to blanket major cities and even small sleepy communities with arsenals of spy cameras.
All over the United States, Canada and Britain, surveillance camera systems are being installed on street corners, in public bathrooms, in residential neighborhoods, and even in parks and forests. We are asked to trust the government underlings who control them that they are working for our best interests as said underlings are caught using the cameras to spy on naked women in their homes.
In the UK, government programs encourage citizens to spy on their neighbors and report suspicious activity as part of a CCTV channel subscriber package.
Homeland Security funding is being utilized to fund this mass expansion of the surveillance state in the US as city and state officials clamor at the teat of Big Brother to milk the cash cow of the police state and win the contracts for installing more and more sophisticated spy cameras.
The government demands to know everything about our private lives and catalogue, file and index every aspect of our existence, yet government itself becomes more and more secret with each passing day as it engages in escalating criminal activities.
The agenda behind surveillance cameras is not simply to track the movements of certain individuals. There are not enough watchers to catalogue all the information. The cameras are about behavior control and creating an omnipresent atmosphere whereby the citizen consciously regulates his own behavior so as not to seem suspicious. The surveillance cameras are there to make a statement. We are the prison guards, you are the prisoners.
As George Orwell described it in 1984,
"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard."
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
This is the prison without bars. This is the panopticon, a prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. This is a portrait of the accelerating movement by western governments to erect giant, powerful, all-pervading mass surveillance, tracking and control grids that will keep all populations firmly under the baleful and watchful gaze of Big Brother.
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Post by Watchman on Feb 18, 2006 20:13:48 GMT -5
Judy Keen, USA TODAY | February 15 2006
CHICAGO — Surveillance cameras — aimed at government buildings, train platforms and intersections here — might soon be required at corner taverns and swanky nightclubs.
Mayor Richard Daley wants to require bars open until 4 a.m. to install security cameras that can identify people entering and leaving the building. Other businesses open longer than 12 hours a day, including convenience stores, eventually would have to do the same.
Daley's proposed city ordinance adds a dimension to security measures installed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The proliferation of security cameras — especially if the government requires them in private businesses — troubles some civil liberties advocates.
"There is no reason to mandate all of those cameras unless you one day see them being linked up to the city's 911 system," says Ed Yohnka of the Illinois American Civil Liberties Union. "We have perhaps reached that moment of critical mass when people ... want to have a dialogue about how much of this is appropriate."
Milwaukee is considering requiring cameras at stores that have called police three or more times in a year. The Baltimore County Council in Maryland ordered large malls to put cameras in parking areas after a murder in one garage last year. The measure passed despite objections from business groups.
"We require shopping centers to put railings on stairs and install sprinkler systems for public safety. This is a proper next step," says Baltimore County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz, who sponsored the ordinance.
Some cities aren't going along. Schenectady, N.Y., shelved a proposal that would have required cameras in convenience stores.
"The safer we make the city, the better it is for everyone," says Chicago Alderman Ray Suarez, who first proposed mandatory cameras in some businesses. "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"
Nick Novich, owner of three Chicago bars, worries about the cost. "Every added expense ... puts a small business in greater jeopardy of going out of business," he says. Daley says cameras will deter crime, but Novich says, "That's what we're paying taxes for."
Colleen McShane, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, says the proposal, which Daley announced last week, is an unfair burden on small businesses. "This is once again more government intrusion," she says.
Some business owners say cameras make patrons feel safer. Cameras are in all 30 Chicago bars, clubs and restaurants owned by Ala Carte Entertainment, spokeswoman Julia Shell says: "It's far more cost-effective for us to have them than not to have them."
By spring, 30 Chicago intersections will have cameras to catch drivers who run red lights. More than 2,000 cameras around the city are linked to an emergency command center, paid for in part by federal homeland security funds.
The newest "smart" cameras alert police when there's gunfire or when someone leaves a package or lingers outside public buildings. The system is based on the one in London that helped capture suspected terrorists after last summer's subway bombings.
Chicago is installing those sophisticated camera systems more aggressively than any other U.S. city, says Rajiv Shah, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago who studies the policy implications of surveillance technology. Recording what people do in public "is just getting easier and cheaper to do," he says. "Think of your camera cellphone."
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Post by Watchman on Mar 24, 2006 18:23:17 GMT -5
The NYPD is installing 505 surveillance cameras around the city " that could track hundreds of thousands of people and cars a day. The police cameras will constantly keep watch over neighborhoods plagued by crime and monitor potential terror targets.
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Post by Watchman on Apr 15, 2006 14:10:25 GMT -5
NYPD Offers Details Of New Public Surveillance Camera Program
Solana Pyne / NY 1 | April 13 2006
Ever get the feeling you're being watched? Just wait a while. The Police Department is in the process of setting up hundreds of cameras to keep silent watch on many streets, and all the people who walk them. NY1’s Solana Pyne filed this report.
They're in the subways. Private businesses have them. But NYPD officials say the police have only installed a few dozen of their own surveillance cameras on the streets of the city.
"The system will consist of 505 cameras to be installed in two phases in a total of 253 locations, first in Brooklyn and then in the remaining boroughs,” said NYPD Deputy Inspector Delayne Hurley. “The locations have been selected primarily on the basis of combating concentrated pockets of crime."
A pilot project is already underway in the 83rd Precinct, and Inspector Hurley said that the system will be expanded within a matter of weeks.
Hurley spoke at a City Council Public Safety Committee hearing Tuesday, giving the most detailed description yet of the department's plans to get cameras onto the streets of the city.
“The recorded image will be digitally stored, enabling investigators to access it at a future date if necessary,” Hurley said. “Camera locations will have signs posted nearby clearly stating that the area is being monitored by the Police Department."
And soon, Lower Manhattan is slated to get hundreds more cameras as part of a new counter-terrorism initiative there. It’s a project so new, Hurley said he could tell the council little about it.
“Because this program is under development, I will not be able to provide further detail about it at this time," he said.
Police officials also were unable to provide enough details to calm worries about how surveillance recordings will be used and how misuse will be detected and punished.
“What's the plan? And how is the department holding officers to what standards? And how are they training officers and setting up a system so that our rights are not needlessly violated?" asked Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Committee Chairman Peter Vallone Jr. said he was frustrated by the lack of information officials provided at the hearing, but he says the department promised to follow up with more.
He also said cameras will make us safer.
“My first concern is that we need to get this rolled out as soon as possible. Video cameras will help us deter terrorism,” Vallone said. “But number two, we need to do this within proper guidelines to ensure that people's privacy is protected."
Meanwhile, the NYPD seems to be proceeding full steam ahead.
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Post by Watchman on Apr 15, 2006 14:11:46 GMT -5
Fort Pierce wants to install crime surveillance cameras throughout city
TC Palm | April 14 2006
FORT PIERCE — Electronic eyes peering down on public rights-of-way in some of the most violent areas in the city present a much-needed additional tool to help law enforcement reduce crime, city officials say.
During this month's annual City Commission workshop, Police Chief Eugene Savage will propose a crime surveillance pilot program costing between $200,000 and $400,000. No date has been set for the workshop.
If approved, Savage said he would recommend installing several cameras in a small section of the city to evaluate whether they are effective in fighting crime. The exact location of the cameras would be kept secret, Savage said.
"If it's overt and people know where they are, the criminals won't do anything in that area. They'll just move a couple of blocks away," he said.
Police said they are not decided whether the cameras would be monitored live or whether the images would be taped and retained.
In Tampa, where surveillance cameras have been in place for about 10 years, signs are posted to warn people they're being watched.
"They do that to get people to behave," Savage said. "We want the same thing, but we have areas we need to clean up. I would prefer we start this process covertly and then let them know they're being surveilled."
Savage said police are looking at targeting the area primarily from Orange Avenue north and from U.S. 1 north.
"We're looking to install cameras in areas with high drive-by shootings, immigrant robberies and drug-related areas that perpetuate crime," he said.
Law enforcement tried to thwart drug activity about three years ago in the northwest area by installing speakers on the street, which played classical music. But that was short-lived.
"It served its purpose to a degree," Savage said. "Some of the drug dealers moved, but people started getting used to the classical music. We were kind of entertaining them. I got rid of it because its usefulness ran out."
If the cameras become reality, Fort Pierce will be one of only a few cities in the state, including Tampa and West Palm Beach, using police surveillance to monitor public activity.
Nationwide, cities such as New York City, Chicago and Baltimore also use them. The use of video cameras has sparked national debate among civil libertarians who say the cameras are an infringement on privacy rights. Law enforcement agencies, however, contend the use of video cameras are an innovative tool to smart policing.
Commissioner Eddie Becht said he'd have to weigh the citizens' expectations of privacy concerning where the cameras are going to be installed before he could make a decision on whether cameras are a good idea.
"If I'm standing in front of the Sunrise Theatre, I don't think I'd have an expectation of privacy," Becht said. "If the cameras are going to peer down into somebody's back yard, I'd have a problem with that. I really don't like law enforcement knowing my business, but I'll tolerate that if there's a real deterrent."
Mayor Bob Benton said he would have trouble supporting the surveillance system using tax dollars and would instead prefer to put more police officers on the streets.
"That is very expensive," he said. "Somebody needs to show me that it works."
Savage said a typical police officer salary with benefits, equipment and training costs taxpayers between $65,000 and $70,000. Currently, the city employs 110 police officers.
"We can get the additional personnel, but this allows us to police smarter," Savage said of the surveillance cameras.
Commissioner R. "Duke" Nelson, who has pushed for the cameras for the past several years after seeing them implemented in Tampa, said public surveillance already is being used at area Wal-Marts and the cost benefits will save citizens in the long run.
"We're trying to curtail behavior of individuals because when people think you're watching them, they tend not to do things wrongfully or illegally," Nelson said. "It's a deterrent."What: A pilot program using surveillance cameras in city neighborhoods.
Cost: $200,000 to $400,000 for initial startup, excluding maintenance and monitoring costs.
Area targeted: High-crime areas from Orange Avenue north and from U.S. 1 north.
Monitoring: Wireless transmission from cameras to specially equipped police vehicles.
OTHER CITIES
Tampa and West Palm Beach have had experience with surveillance cameras.
Tampa
The Tampa Police Department uses about 12 surveillance cameras in its crime-ridden entertainment district Ybor City. The city has been using them for about 10 years but drew national cries of "Big Brother" about five years ago when it turned to face recognition technology, said Cpl. Mike Morrow, in charge of overseeing the system.
For the most part, people ignore the cameras and forget they are there, Morrow said.
"They are part of the environment," he said.
However, Morrow couldn't point to any data showing the cameras reduce crime.
"Cameras give our police department flexibility to manipulate our manpower to be effective in other areas," Morrow said. "You can't specifically say the cameras have reduced crime."
Morrow said footage from the cameras has resulted in arrests for robbery, burglary, stabbings and assault.
West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach Assistant Police Chief Guillermo Perez said the city last year had planned a crime surveillance pilot program employing four cameras in the city's downtown entertainment district. However, it took eight months to get the cameras installed and the company hired to do the installation couldn't get the cameras to work.
Perez said the city now plans to install 25 video cameras within the next six months in the city's downtown and troubled neighborhoods. He said the program initially was met with resistance but that declined with concerns about terrorism. In last year's London subway bombings, the perpetrators were caught on surveillance tapes.
"It's not like we're out there to violate anyone's civil rights," Perez said. "We're just trying to safeguard the public." Perez said monitoring of the cameras would be done in patrol cars by officers who have cameras located on their respective beats. They will be able to view the camera transmissions on laptops.
"We would eventually set up a command center," he said. "Officers will be fully trained as far as what they can and cannot do regarding civil liberties."
CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES
What the Treasure Coast chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says about public surveillance cameras:
"As far as the ACLU is concerned, there is no objection to cameras in specific high profile real potential terrorist targets," said T. A. Wyner, president of the Treasure Coast Chapter of the ACLU. "It's this idea of blanket surveillance of public spaces and streets. I think it's a bad idea. What really needs to be done before we go any further is, will the cameras record to tape and the images be retained? What is the criteria for other governmental agencies and the public to access the tapes? What rules are in place to enforce protection of civil liberties and punish those who violate them? Before we allow this to happen, we have to consider the idea that we'll be in a society where everyone is under constant surveillance. Isn't that where this is headed?"
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Post by Watchman on May 20, 2006 10:10:56 GMT -5
Mitch Ratcliffe | May 18 2006
Declan McCullagh reports today on Wisconsin Republican F. James Sensenbrenner's draft legislation that would require Internet service providers to deliver records of users' surfing to the federal government. The ostensible target this time: Kiddie porn. The real target: The American people's freedom to explore the Internet and ideas in privacy, because a few people in government think they know better what we should be doing.
Yes, of course, we should work to eliminate kiddie porn. How Turning the American population into a suspect class is the least efficient and most error-prone approach to protecting civil society.about doing it the old fashioned way, by targeting kiddie pornographers? It is relatively simple work to find links to kiddie porn and place court-approved monitoring on those sites to identify who is uploading and downloading pictures. Why, we must ask as Americans used to an environment that supports free expression and the freedom to explore even the most controversial ideas, are all U.S. Internet users the target of increasing government surveillance?
Likewise, instead of monitoring U.S. phone calling patterns to identify potential terrorist calls (and the attendant millions of false positives), the U.S. government ought to use legal means to find and arrest or kill terrorists. Adding infinite complexity to the system by watching every American's phone calls doesn't make sense and is at odds with American tradition. Conservatives, too, should be outraged by these programs as much as anyone, after all it was Ronald Reagan who said in his first inaugural address:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
If we can't trust Americans to be innocent until proven guilty, government becomes a prison without walls, where everyone is watched for any transgression. That's exactly what we seem to have today in the United States, and the telecommunications network is a keystone of that surveillance.
Before the critics of anything anti-surveillance jump in, again, to point out that I suffer from a "pre-9/11 mentality" or that tracking user surfing isn't surveillance and that only the guilty have to worry, let's be clear: Recording and reporting what everyone does on the Net is surveillance. Surveillance is a function of government the United States has strictly controlled in order to minimize the government's, or an individual who gains access to surveillance data, ability to restrict individual choices or facilitate the use by a political party of data gathered by government to blackmail or intimidate citizens.
For all his good intentions with regards the security of the United States, President Bush suffers from an idealism that is much more dangerous than the pre-9/11 mentality, because he apparently ignored the 20th century. He has repeatedly said that he can look into the hearts of others and determine whether they are good or evil, the same kind of niavete that led Neville Chamberlain to appease Hitler at Munich. He actually suffers from a pre-Auschwitz mentality that refuses to acknowledge the critical lesson of the 20th century, the extraordinary depths of evil man, especially when left unrestrained by law, can acheive. Hannah Arendt, in her essay Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility, wrote that "realiz[ing] of what man is capable…is the precondition for any modern political thinking."
Bush's pre-modern pre-Auschwitz faith in the goodness of leaders he has the opportunity to meet and look in the eye has been diplomatically disastrous. But at home his belief that he can suspend some liberties in order to protect all liberties is extraordinarily dangerous because it opens the door to abuse today and far into the future.
Believing in his own good intentions and his ability to intuit the intentions of others, Bush has established a precedent that can be abused by anyone who gains even a modicum of power in this country, including his own close associates, many of whom have proved less than trustworthy. Anyone who attended to the lessons of the 20th century would recognize that the rule of law, not men, is the only safe choice when seeking to protect liberty.
Politically, Bush has resorted to fear as the only motivator for his decisions and national policy, because fear can appear to justify governmental exceptionalism. This will lead to a disastrous end for American liberty if we don't reverse course immediately, by fighting the Sensenbrenner bill, the NSA call database or any policy that begins with the assumption that Americans must be monitored in order to keep them honest and loyal.
Consider that in the current environment of fear that is the United States every phone call could be a terrorist plot and every illegal alien coming to pick fruit for the summer is an invading economic soldier, the government has turned every citizen into a would-be criminal who must prove their innocence by refraining from the possibility they might be recorded in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who has clicked a link with an innocuously labelled link only to find themselves staring at filth needs to be worried that the surveillance society will sweep them into a specific criminal category, transforming their innocence into a Kafka-esque guilt.
This is, in short, an insanely frightened country seeking to destroy enemies real and imagined, even among its own citizens. A nation of laws, where men do not step in to create exceptions based on their instincts about other people's souls, does not look like America today. IT managers and users need to be completely tuned to the implications of this fearful environment, because the tools they use can be configured to project that fear directly into their customers lives and their own Web usage, respectively.
McCullach provides straightforward proof of this campaign to criminalize life in Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez' speech to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where he characterized the Internet itself as a criminal venture: "At the most basic level, the Internet is used as a tool for sending and receiving large amounts of child pornography on a relatively anonymous basis." The Internet is a tool, but it is not a tool designed for sending and receiving large amounts of child pornography. Nor should it be a tool for monitoring every action of the ordinary citizen just because it is possible.
According to McCullach, Sensenbrenner's bill would make it a felony for anyone to have a link on any part of their site that pointed to kiddie porn, which would implicate Web site operators and bloggers in a criminal conspiracy because of comment spam that included such links.
The jails aren't big enough to imprison everyone or even every Web manager, so it would make more sense to use the legal process to target surveillance to only those who are actually producing and distributing kiddie porn. Or to address any other criminal enterprise, terrorist plotting or ill-intended undertaking, for that matter.
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Post by Watchman on Sept 29, 2006 14:54:49 GMT -5
RICHMOND: Council seeks bids for surveillance system set up to monitor hot spots, illegal dumping areas
John Geluardi / CONTRA COSTA TIMES | September 28 2006
Daily activities such as going to the corner store, strolling in a park or picking up children at school soon could be monitored by Richmond police cameras.
After a presentation by Richmond police Chief Chris Magnus on Tuesday night, the City Council put out a call for surveillance companies to submit bids for wiring up crime hot spots and areas where illegal dumping frequently occurs.
The cost of the surveillance program will not be known until the council decides on the type of closed-circuit equipment and the Police Department works out camera monitoring policies, Magnus said.
"We know crime is repeatedly committed in various areas around Richmond," he said. "If we had cameras in those areas, we could have collected information that may have led to arrests and convictions. It's another set of eyes."
No specific camera sites have been chosen yet, but the most likely areas would be in the Iron Triangle and parts of south Richmond and the Shields/Reid Neighborhood. The cameras would monitor areas known for homicides and drug dealing. They would also monitor some public parks and isolated streets near the West County Landfill and in south Richmond where illegal dumping commonly takes place.
Magnus was quick to point out that closed-circuit surveillance is not a cure-all for crime and illegal dumping, but it could help police investigations, lead to more arrests and support witness testimony.
Longtime Iron Triangle resident Odessa Green said it's high time the cameras were installed.
"I've lived in Richmond for 65 years, and it's not Richmond anymore," she said. "It's a slaughterhouse, and it's filthy. When are we finally going to get these cameras?"
But others argued that closed-circuit monitoring of public streets is an invasion of privacy and won't deter crime, but rather move it.
"The remedies to the crime problem go way beyond anything a camera can offer," said Jim Hausken, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The idea that we have to give up our civil liberties for a false sense of security offered by a camera is outrageous."
Magnus said the cameras would only monitor public right of ways and not private property.
"There are going to be people concerned about civil liberties," he said. "But we're talking about something that could help protect the civil liberties of the 99 percent of residents who are affected by crime."
City staff is expected to put out a request for proposals within 30 days and prepare a report for the City Council in about 90 days.
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Post by Watchman on Oct 5, 2006 15:39:58 GMT -5
October 3, 2006 BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter Chicago will spend $1 million next year to install 100 more surveillance cameras on high-crime street corners — this time, cameras of the stealth variety — to monitor gang and drug activity.
Operation Disruption cameras used to be about as subtle as a punch in the nose. They weighed 100 pounds, had flashing blue lights and were encased in the Chicago Police Department’s classic logo. The $30,000 cameras virtually announced that you were entering a high-crime neighborhood.
The next generation of video surveillance — in a city that’s fast become famous for it — is a lot more discreet. The camera weighs just 15 pounds, costs $6,000 and looks about as unobtrusive as a street light. Digital recordings can be stored and downloaded within minutes.
Both versions have night vision capability and the ability to rotate 360 degrees. Gunshot detection technology is “still being tested,” officials said.
“In some communities, they want the blue light because they’re sick and tired of the gangbangers and drug dealers.….And that announces [the presence of a camera] much more” than the new version, Mayor Daley told reporters after a police graduation at McCormick Place.
“Some people want the blue light [camera]. Some don’t. So you have to work with the community. …Sometimes, they can put [the more obtrusive] camera in for a temporary period of time — six months to a year — crime lessens and they put the other camera” in.
Calling surveillance cameras the “next best thing” to a police officer on every corner, the mayor said he won’t stop installing cameras “until people feel very safe on every block. That’s all they want. They want to feel safe — in the alley, in front of their home.”
Police Supt. Phil Cline said the new and improved cameras can be moved more easily to accommodate shifting crime patterns. In some neighborhoods, signs will be posted warning criminals that Big Brother is watching. In other places, there will be no warning signs.
“It looks like a streetlight. So it’ll come to our tactical advantage,” Cline said.
The new cameras will bring to 300 the number of cameras installed in high-crime areas with microwave antennas that beam pictures back to the 911 center and district stations.
Although critics contend the presence of cameras shifts crime to the next block, Cline argued otherwise. In neighborhoods that have had cameras for more than six months, reports of criminal incidents are down more than 30 percent and narcotics-related crimes have dropped by over 60 percent, he said.
“When we install a camera, we’re also implementing violence reduction strategies to ensure the crime simply doesn’t move down the block or around the corner,” he said.
The Chicago Police Department has a dozen suitcases that allow police officers to monitor cameras from crime scenes. But Daley said his ultimate goal is to let all officers monitor cameras on their beats from their squad cars. That technology is still being developed. The city is also continuing to test sophisticated software capable of spotting “suspicious and unusual behavior” spotted by its network of more than 2,200 cameras.
Also on Tuesday, the mayor announced that Chicago Police officers issued 10,359 citations — and levied 281 fines against parents — in a summer crackdown against curfew violations.
Chicago’s year-round curfew ordinance prohibits anyone under the age of 17 from being out after 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday or after 11:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Parents whose kids are caught committing crimes after curfew face fines as high as $500.
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