When Newark Mayor Cory Booker unveiled his plans for the Community Eye urban surveillance system in Newark police director Garry MacCarthy said, “I kind of feel like a kid on Christmas morning.”

We are EXTREMELY wary of any proposal, plan, new technology, or new law that makes a police director feel like “a kid on Christmas morning.”

Mayor Booker’s plan calls for 100 cameras and audio gunshot detectors to go up around eight square miles of Newark.

The system will supposedly be able to tell the difference between car backfires and gunshots, and help prevent tragedies like the execution of three Newark teenagers last week.

Will video surveillance really be anything more than a psychological deterrent to criminals?

Adrian J. Slywotzky and Karl Weber wrote yesterday in The Huffington Post:

“It’s true that installing hundreds of video cameras will produce vast reams of raw data in the form of millions of hours’ worth of video tape. But turning this data into true information is another matter. Where will local governments–mostly strapped for cash–find the hundreds or thousands of extra personnel needed to monitor and study the video tapes?”

We bet tapes will be mostly reviewed after the explosion or the murder, poured over by squads of experts, all of whom will claim that if only they had been the ones watching the raw feed they could have prevented the attack. How could local law enforcement have missed the obviously awkward gait of the man with a rifle under his trenchcoat!?

Cameras extend the reach of the human eye, but not the comprehension. All video surveillance will give us is better hindsight, some more paranoia, and a falser sense of security.