It’s a story out of Austin, Texas, with clear implications for every town where the left dominates.
Austin officials last year celebrated their elimination of license-plate-reading cameras; they’ve gone quiet since an insane crime spree — three teens on a 30-hour tear involving 12 shootings and five stolen cars — ended only when they strayed into neighboring town, whose plate-readers allowed its police to nab the perps.
In other words, killing the cameras simply allowed criminals to elude the cops in precisely the way that this kind of surveillance tech is designed to defeat.
Anything that helps crimefighting annoys the left, which always whines that it’s not “data-driven” or doesn’t support “real public safety” — excuses the Austin City Council seized upon as it ditched the cameras.
Of course, automatically reading license plates to immediately locate stolen cars is a prime example of “data-driven” policing.
The real issue? Well, Austin City Councilwoman Natasha Harper-Madison fretted, “I don’t want to be part of a system that inadvertently harms.”
Harms who?
Yes, civil liberties obsessives point to how an overreaching government could abuse such tech, but any tool can be abused: The answer is to impose the correct restrictions on its use, not to ban it completely.
No, the real problem is that this tech works too well, reducing car theft and helping to nab criminals.
Cue the bogus “racist” charge: The New York Civil Liberties Union whines, “The New York City Police Department’s surveillance machinery disproportionally threatens the rights of non-white New Yorkers” — though none of this tech focuses on perps’ race.
Thing is, criminals are disproportionately black and Hispanic, so as the “equity”-focused left sees law enforcement as racist — even though crime victims as every bit as disproportionately minority.
It’s true that libertarian-leaning conservatives, such as Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), also want to ban license-plate-readers; they’re willing to accept higher crime in the name of privacy rights.
But interfering with crimefighting is overwhelming a leftist preoccupation, especially when it’s masked by spurious “racism” claims.
Keeping people safe from being shot or robbed just isn’t a priority for modern progressives.
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