In 2007, David Murakami Wood, currently Canada Research Chair in Surveillance Studies at Queen’s University, helped write a report on the spread of CCTV for Britain’s information commission. Murakami, then at Newcastle University, told the New York Times that, “the idea of CCTV as a deterrent for something like this is no longer accepted.”

And although the prevalence of public surveillance cameras has exploded in the last decade, there still does not seem to be much evidence justifying the forward march of the surveillance state.

A 2016 study of 146-camera CCTV surveillance system in Newark, New Jersey, published in the Journal of Crime and Justice, found modest support for CCTV as a deterrent against auto theft while demonstrating no effect on the other crime types – including violent offences. These findings were consistent with studies that examined public CCTV surveillance programs in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Sweden.

The bottom line is that study after study has shown that the effectiveness of CCTV as a crime prevention tool is questionable. Why would a CCTV surveillance system in Ottawa will be any different?

If cameras won’t stop crime, what about the detection of crime? Maybe CCTV cameras will help the Ottawa police identify and apprehend suspects. Except the police already do a very good job of that. Let’s look at the three shooting that lead Watson down the CCTV rabbit hole in the first place – they have all been solved. In each case arrests were made mere days after the incidents.