In California and Elsewhere, Fear of Crime Drives the Surveillance State

Concerns about public safety will eventually recede, but Big Brother will still be watching.

Did somebody say something about never letting a crisis go to waste? That may well have been on California Gov. Gavin Newsom's mind when he announced the installation of hundreds of surveillance cameras in Oakland to address public concerns about crime. Whether or not robberies and assaults decline because of police monitoring, you can bet those cameras will remain in place long after everybody has forgotten the reason for their existence.

Crime Fears Become an Excuse for Surveillance

"Building on public safety investments in Oakland and the East Bay, Governor Gavin Newsom today announced the California Highway Patrol (CHP) has entered into a contract with Flock Safety to install a network of approximately 480 high-tech cameras in the City of Oakland and on state freeways in the East Bay to combat criminal activity and freeway violence," the governor's office announced Mar 29.

The surveillance plan essentially bypasses local authorities, involving a contract between the California Highway Patrol and Flock Safety to install and maintain 290 cameras along surface streets and 190 cameras along state highways. Still, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, a Democrat, embraced the announcement, saying "this new camera network will help us stop crime and hold more suspects accountable."

Discussing crime rates is a good way to start an argument. Data is self-reported by law enforcement agencies and always about a year out of date. Polling finds a majority of Americans concerned about crime, while the FBI reports most violent crimes declining as of 2022 (the most recent data) after a surge during the chaos of 2020 that broke from decades of declining rates. Robbery and property crimes, on the other hand, spiked upwards, according to the FBI. Evidence suggests further reductions in violence in 2023, though the data isn't yet complete.

But crime varies from place to place, which means that nationwide numbers don't tell the full story; people experience local conditions, not national averages. They respond to what they perceive. California is among the states bucking the positive national trend, according to state and FBI statistics.

"The violent crime rate increased 6.1 percent in 2022…and the property crime rate increased 6.2 percent in 2022," according to the California Department of Justice's Criminal Justice Statistics Center. FBI state-level crime data agrees California saw an increase in crime that year. Oakland, in particular, has a problem.

"Overall, reported crimes in Oakland rose 18% in 2023 compared to 2022, with violent crime up 21% and property crime up 17%," the San Francisco Chronicle reported in March.

That resulted in a recall effort against Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and a new chief for the Oakland Police Department. It has also meant an influx of California Highway Patrol officers to bolster local law enforcement, as well as the installation of hundreds of surveillance cameras.

Playing Politics With Public Concerns

Much of this is for show. Nobody expects the highway patrol will permanently patrol Oakland, just as nobody anticipates seeing National Guard troops in New York City subway stations for an extended period of time (FBI figures also show a rise in violent crime in New York for 2022, though state and New York City data show improvements since). In both cases, warm bodies in uniform were dispatched without much thought as to their use or coordination with local authorities.

"So far, they are mainly scenes of soldiers and troopers standing at subway entrances with combat rifles while police officers check bags," wrote criminal justice researcher and former cop Brandon del Pozo about the New York deployment, which left him unimpressed as to its necessity or effectiveness. "Where a government deploys its soldiers will always be politics by other means, whether their objective is to topple a foreign regime, or in this case, retake the Pelham One Two Three."

But long after the highway patrol uniforms leave the streets of Oakland, those surveillance cameras will still be there. They'll watch not just criminals who prey on their neighbors, but regular people going about their lives and, undoubtedly, breaking one of California's myriad laws, rules, and regulations. In the name of fighting crime, everybody will be monitored for years to come. The same can be said of New York City efforts to monitor subway riders after the National Guard troops go back home.

New York's High-Tech Surveillance

"New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Edward A. Caban today announced efforts being taken to make the Metropolitan Transit Authority's (MTA) subway system safer by investing in new technology to detect firearms," Adams' office announced March 28, the day before Newsom unveiled the surveillance camera program.

The draft policy statement for the system specifies electromagnetic detectors equipped with cameras to capture the images of those suspected of carrying weapons. Video clips will then be automatically transmitted to police officers for their response.

Once those detectors are installed in subway stations, it's fair to assume they'll be there for years to come. Just like the California surveillance cameras.

It's worth noting that Newsom and Adams responded to fears of crime not by repealing laws that discourage self-defense or by otherwise freeing the public to respond to threats. They went directly to top-down surveillance systems that empower the government at the expense of the individual. In the surveillance state, everybody is a potential suspect.

The British Model

The end result might be something like the United Kingdom, where it's illegal to carry any weapon intended for self-defense, but the public lives under the watchful eyes of over 5 million surveillance cameras. Britons are also subjected to communications monitoring that Edward Snowden calls "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy." This was all implemented in the name of the public's own good, of course.

"Surveillance footage forms a key component of UK crime prevention strategy," comments Politics.co.uk. But the proliferation of cameras "in public places has fueled unease about the erosion of civil liberties and individual human rights, raising concerns of an Orwellian 'big brother' culture."

With regard to Oakland, Newsom promises "the cameras will assist law enforcement in addressing crime while protecting privacy interests." Maybe, though I wouldn't bet that privacy will be a priority for the people running and monitoring the cameras. But it's fair to say that, faced with very real public concerns about crime, the governor of California didn't let a crisis go to waste.