According to a report published November 8, 2009 in the Reading Eagle, “In a ruling that puts the city’s year-old downtown security cameras in jeopardy, a state official has preliminarily ordered the city to use $48-an-hour police officers to monitor the $14.8 million system, not $10-an-hour civilians…
“City officials said using police costs too much and that the system may have to be scrapped if police monitors are required, but [Jack E. Marino, a hearing examiner for the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board] said that’s not a valid defense….
“Allentown, Lancaster, Baltimore and Wilmington, Del., use civilians to monitor their security cameras, and Reading hired its first civilian monitors in December. The police union, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 9, immediately filed a complaint with the Labor Relations Board.”
The entirety of the report can be read here.
As an employee of the company that has supplied most of the cameras for Lancaster, which in turn uses Lancaster as one big showcase for its customers, I find this to be a ray of sunshine.
Virtually no one has asked how this arrangement in Lancaster benefits Bosch Security Systems, a company that will not sell its products for military applications, but is very well okay with putting its cameras in the hands of unaccountable civilians to spy on other civilians.
Who watches the watchmen is over said in the whole debate, but as an addendum, who watches the watchmen’s corporate relationships?