Watching the Detectives

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/SkyWatch.jpg

There's a "Sky Watch" police surveillance tower on my street, as of this week. They have dark tinted windows, so you can never see who's watching, and I have to admit I kind of want to be in one.

NB: That pic is not of my street, but of a friend's intersection a few weeks ago in a nearby neighborhood. Taking sides, is the increased police presence because there are lot of white kids in Crown Heights/Bed-Stuy now, or do you think it's a result of increased gang/drug violence in best "The Wire"-stylee?

Woah that's kind of scary. However you're right, it would be awesome to sit in there and just watch ppl all night.

is this supposed to be an actual surveillance gathering operation or mostly a deterrent? guessing the latter

isn't the whole point of surveillance that it be um, y'know, secret...?

this looks more like a show of force

thought this thread was gonna be abt the terrible cillian murphy/lucy liu film

whatever it is it looks totally fucking obnoxious. Reminds me of when they were shooting a movie in my neighborhood (The Pursuit of Happyness - FUCK YOU WILL SMITH) and we had these really annoying lights shining bright as day for several nights

Well, the point is that since the windows are so dark, you never know whether anyone's watching or not. As far as I can tell, it basically moves the dealing off the corners, if such a thing were in fact happening at Franklin and St Johns. But the dealers still have to go SOMEwhere, so I'm not sure how much that helps.

I also hadn't noticed any increased noise or violence in my nabe so I'm not sure what they're trying to surveil, but my friend in Bed-Stuy said there've been multiple shootings and and police investigations etc etc over by him.

I mean, really, if we're going to bring up The Wire, pretty sure it wouldn't be hard for people to figure out when shifts change or whatever and they see the thing lowering for someone to get in/out of it.

obligatory panopticon ref

xp Pretty sure that 10-minute windows a few times a day are not enough for a corner crew to make their targets. Also, junkies notoriously bad at remembering what time it is.

I was just playing devil's advocate. I can picture Marlo's guys figuring it out pretty quick.

maybe they should have a ferris wheel in constant rotation, with tinted pods, to further obscure when someone is watching from / is present in the pods

Like the shell game, but with PO-lice.

but one of the pods has a drug dealer inside, and another pod contains a goat, monty hall style

Okay now you've lost me.

what a great use of nypd money

i like the idea of the surveillance units being manned by goats.