The question here isn't whether someone who stabs someone to get $5 for their crack fix should or shouldn't be held accountable for their actions. We could debate(probably productively) the relative influences of individual will, systemic sociological and economic factors, and physiological addiction in determining violent anti-social behaivor.

The question also isn't whether or not our system of criminal "justice", either nationally (2 million incarcerated, overwhelmingly disproportionately non-white) or locally ("a system that is overwhelmed and broken", under federal investigation) is racist and fundamentally misguided.

The specific question I have regarding these cameras is what impact they will actually have in stabilizing the communities they have been placed in, and at what cost. Does a continuously flashing blue police light on a street corner make the surrounding neighborhood safer? Or does it just mark that neighborhood as criminal, as criminalized? Here we can look at the disparity between the discrete Homeland Security busy-work cameras in the downtown area(we see that massive cctv sure did a lot of good fighting terrorism in London, but I'm sure the installation contract was lucrative) and the permanently flashing cameras which are being strung up in the poorer neighborhoods. The latter seem to me to be playing into a strategy of "crime-fighting" which takes communities with problems, and effectively excises them from the body politic so they can be subjected to a (para)military logic of surveillance and control. And I don't think this kind of strategy can really succeed.

And this isn't even getting into the civil liberties and privacy issues....