New: Memphis spent $10 million installing thousands of 24/7 police-linked surveillance cameras, called SkyCops, on the promise they'd deter crime. But crime's only gone up. And even the cops who beat Tyre Nichols to death weren't deterred.
“Surveillance doesn’t prevent crime, even police crime. These officers knew they were on camera, and they still did this.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/02/skycop-nichols-memphis-crime/
One SkyCop camera captured the SCORPION cops' brutality in Nichols' killing. And thankfully so, given how shaky and obstructed their own body cameras were during the attack.
NAACP Memphis president:
“We put SkyCop cameras up to assist the police in fighting crime in our community. And yet they come and commit the very same crimes we are trying to fight against."
But ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/02/skycop-nichols-memphis-crime/
SkyCop's actual deterrent effect on crime in Memphis is totally unproven. People have broken into cars and fired guns in clear view of the cameras and not been caught.
Journalists with the Daily Memphian did an incredible investigation in 2021 that found that the cameras were cited in less than 3% of the more than 74,000 crime reports filed that year
I talked to the former Memphis police surveillance manager who installed the SkyCop camera that recorded Nichols' beating (and who now works for SkyCop).
He said, “Crimes of passion cannot be deterred. ... In the Nichols case, that was a crime of passion, and it was caught on video."
He says surveillance is the future, so get used to it:
“It’s the most indiscriminate form of policing there is. The camera doesn’t care. It just records.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/02/skycop-nichols-memphis-crime/
Drew Harwell
hypervisible
Dan Hon