Columnist Making Sense

Are the blinders coming off the media? Probably not, but sometimes the light sneaks in:

• New York City has thousands of police surveillance cameras, which really come in handy when a terrorist strikes. After the car bomb attempt last weekend, the cameras captured an image of the vehicle driving through Times Square and one of a man taking off his shirt who looked nothing like the guy arrested Monday.

  Which raises the question: What good are cameras? The debate over them is often framed as hardheaded law enforcement types versus wimpy civil libertarians. Whether the cameras actually work in practice to help solve and prevent crime generally gets ignored.

• It shouldn't. Leave aside those airy privacy concerns for the moment. Installing, maintaining and monitoring thousands of these devices, as in New York and Chicago, costs millions of dollars. Absent cameras, that money could be spent on beat cops, patrol cars, forensic equipment, jail cells, you name it.

  The point of any law enforcement tool is not just to do some good but also to do some good at a reasonable cost compared with the alternatives. It's by no means clear that surveillance cameras even come close to meeting that standard.

Hint to the media - the cameras don't come close - it isn't even a question. Cameras enrich connected companies via contracts. It provides the illusion of police coverage without the attendant costs. That isn't much of a comfort when you're the one on the receiving end of a beating, mugging or shooting, but you can rest assured that somewhere, somehow, your assailant will be captured on video at some point miles away. A video that will never be seen and will probably be recorded over in 48 hours' time, because there isn't anyone watching the cameras.

Our readers have been pointing this out for years now. The media is merely playing catch-up. Again.