We’ve received some clarifications on the security camera to be installed on top of the police trailer in the OB Pier parking lot.
The camera, in fact, will not be monitored, according to Chet Barfield, District 2 community representative. If there is an incident, he explained, then presumably the police could look at the video tapes. The camera is supposed to be installed any day now, and will run 24/7.
Barfield also explained that the camera – worth about $5,000 they estimate – was donated by the owner of a private security company, Leonard Pool of SITUS Surveillance and Security Systems. The DVDs were also donated. SITUS is located up in Kearny Mesa.
“There’ll be no live surveillance,” Barfield told the OB Rag, no one will be in the trailer or other place monitoring the images. The camera, he said, is actually about the size of a microphone.
Asked if the camera will be up in time for the July 4th festivities, Barfield said it should be going up “now”.
Barfield also noted that despite what a recent press article about the camera had reported, there is no connection between the camera and any private security company patrolling the beach. CBS8 had reported:
Councilman Harris says within a couple weeks a donated security camera will go up at the foot of Newport Avenue. It will be operated by a private security company that will also help with patrols.
That’s inaccurate. It’s a different effort altogether, Barfield said, detailing that the OB Mainstreet Association has hired a private security company to run bicycle patrols along the beach front. It’s a 3-month pilot project with Elite Security. Unarmed bike patrol officers with uniforms will work 5 hours a day for 4 days a week during the project, which is in its first month.
It seem somewhat insane that a private business interest group can pay to have a private security company patrolling public property at will?
The bike patrols will be “monitoring” the beach and will have walkies-talkies.
Another example of a police department unwilling to protect and serve our community.
We have a police department that CHOOSES not to enforce existing laws in regards to people living in vehicles, sleeping overnight at the beach and parks, under the influence, so private rent a cops will do what our tax dollars should be doing, ask the corrupt Lt Stone and her boss’ at the O.B.M.A. what happened to the police presence at the trailer ? they claimed it was going to provide a ” police presence in the area ” . Now we will have a rent a cop watching the trailer. People sleep on the wall in front of the trailer every night.
We need a police force and politicians with morals, can we rent an HONEST politician ?
Clean up the corrupt, drug dealing mess at SDPD Western, hire honest cops willing to follow and enforce the law and you won’t need rent a cops.
The current location of the trailer continues to violate state law regarding public access and blocking PUBLIC views, the community update plan, the same plan the editor of the OBRAG wants you to sign a petition for to support and help enforce also says the trailer has to go, and it also says the PUBLIC view is protected by a view cone, enforce and protect ALL OF IT OR NON OF IT !
What do you want to do, make it illegal to be homeless?
Who is running this town? I thought the merchants were supposed to serve the community? What does the average OB’er want?
I’m all in for merchants making money, and I depend on them for my usual local needs, but where do they get off hiring a private security firm to patrol the beach and public areas? Shouldn’t they be more concerned about their storefronts instead?
In the aftermath of all the invasion of privacy and monitoring going on in our private lives, this is really too much.
I really don’t think the merchants have any right to say spy on people on the beach or public areas at all, or to use the police trailer to set up their camera.
Certainly there can be an alternative solution to the merchants concern than a policed/security monitored OB.
The merchant bike patrol needs to make sure no one is breaking the law and drinking on the beach. If you want to drink, hit the bars, people!
Privatize. Privatize. Privatize. Security at the beach, security in the schools, curriculum in the schools. Privatize. Move the money around & around, bait ‘n switch. Boil the frog.
Can someone please donate a slingshot to remove the lens from this camera?
The Pinks shall walk among us.
Looking at crimemapping.com, it looks like the concentration of crimes in the area are along Newport between Abbott and Cable, and along Voltaire between Abbott and Froude. So the stated purpose of the camera is not the purpose of the camera.
Purpose of the camera appears to be “homeless repellant”. This leads to the question of what businesses or other interests Leonard Pool holds in the OB area or in Elite Services.
Qui bono?
Maybe it will help prevent the open dealing of meth in the pier parking lot that has become so ubiquitous.
No evidence of that in crimemapping.com. Where is your evidence? Hearsay?
Why would it show up on crimemapping.com if the police aren’t doing anything to prevent it? My evidence is my own peepers. I’ve seen it too often to count.
Enjoy a sit down there sometime and you’ll watch a whole different kind of market economy as drugs are freely traded among the hordes.
I’m ‘gwan catch some free AC at the olde new CVS someday and watch the drugs unfreely traded amongst the hordes…Unless CA Covered is paying in which case it is freely traded.
You just don’t like homeless people. I go by there all the time, never once saw the slightest evidence of any drug trade, or even that any of those homeless people had any money to buy drugs with.
Are you kidding ? even the cops know who is selling and where !
It’s happening in front of the police trailer that provides a police presence.
An old quote says ” either your too stupid to see what is going on, or your in on it, either way you (police) can’t be trusted ”
The drug dealing is as common as the bum camps at dog beach and the sand dunes, both are protected by S.D.P.D. . Don’t be fooled.
The piece of crap mayor let O.B. go for 8 years , don’t expect any help from that idiot or his representatives, the lowest forms of city trash.
In regards to the drug dealing and bum camps , it’s best to contact state and federal agencies, or S.D.P.D. Headquarters, you WILL NOT find solutions at S.D.P.D. Western, they ARE the problem.
The VA is not the only agency with official and unofficial lists, S.D.P.D. hides it’s complaints as much as possible, then tries to resolve them without an official report or record, hmmmm , wake up chief !
A member of the OBMA told me I was causing a lot problems in the parking lot, I asked him if he was a buyer or a seller, he shut up and kept walking his dog.
Never?
That’s like saying you don’t see water in the ocean or sand on the beach.
Geez, that’s quite a jump in logic to not liking homeless. You’ve never been approached down there to buy something? You must be new in town. Take your blinders off and you’ll see the slow creep of cars with eager hands exchanging goodies.
You seem to have all the answers. Monkey see, monkey do, huh?
Been here 3 years, 1 on Del Monte, 1 1/2 on Brighton, 1/2 on WPL. Go to pier at least once a week, wife goes by there nearly every day. Neither of us ever saw any drug dealing or was ever asked. We did see a lot of homeless people, and got panhandled a lot.
Homeless haters, people who refer to their destitute living conditions as “bum camps”, are really hating on our veterans and the mentally ill, and that sucks. I expected OB to be better than that, and I’m disappointed.
It truly is mindblowing that you still can’t tell the difference between homeless veterans and 19 year old trolls who do nothing but cause problems.
Not as mind-blowing as how hateful, intolerant, and closed-minded you are.
::head explodes::
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