We hope it really hasn’t come to this.
Does the City of Greenville now want to turn over its policing to an “Eye in the Sky?”
At city council meeting this week, a company promoting its product Sky Cop made a presentation.
The product is essentially a camera on a pole surrounded by blue flashing lights. You can see them today in the Wal-Mart parking lot. They are also at use in Memphis throughout the big city.
While the premise is to provide a more secure environment in the areas surrounding the Sky Cops, the product also offers an upgrade to scan license plates. That information is then washed through a database to find vehicles with improper registration and other moving violations. In other words, a revenue generator for the city.
But beyond the under-handed revenue generation opportunity cameras can provide, there is no doubt these cameras violate every facet of the freedom we Americans hold dear.
We do not live in a police state.
We do not have 24-hour surveillance of our every move.
The government we elect is not our overlord to keep tabs on us.
We don’t need this here in Greenville.
As the company representative said, when a Sky Cop appears, crime moves.
Are we going to blanket the community in Sky Cops and live our lives under surveillance?
Are we going to put the cameras in high-crime areas or put them in prominent areas where we don’t want crime to occur?
We’re sure the neighborhoods where the residents foot the largest part of the tax bill would like to have a say in placing any device which would halt crime in their area.
But it should not come to that.
Sky Cops and their ilk have no business in our community. They are built by companies who profit on the fears of a populace but offer little more than a loss of inalienable rights.
