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# Watch out, everybody else is doing it
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/watch-out-everybody-else-is-doing-it-editor/
- Published: 2006-06-01T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T18:10:36.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless

*By Dennis VanCamp Santa Monica*

I didn’t respond to last week’s Q-Line question because I felt the question made little sense but after reading the responses you printed (SMDP, May 26-27, page 4), I am convinced the good people of Santa Monica are willing to sacrifice not only their own rights but more frightenly the rights of everyone regarding anything to ensure their personal definitions of “public safety.” I for one would feel safer if the authorities would simply lock up everybody — except me of course because I am an “ordinary” American as our president says and therefore incapable of any criminal offense, be it dropping a cigarette butt or scratching my butt in public. Numerous courts have ruled that a person is “in public” if said person can “be seen by the public” — no matter that you are drinking a beer on your private property front porch. Hence a charge of drinking in public. Unless of course you pay the city for the privilege as in done on the public property Promenade. But it appears the public will feel safer with surveillance of the alleys and simply let the Promenade drinker drive home.

I do not know as fact whether the city and Chief Butts requested and received funding for these cameras under the guise of public safety and the Patriot Act but surely as your readers have commented the stated purpose of said cameras was not presented as a means necessary to watch homeless based on their attire or status within the community as your readers demand in their quest for safety. Human rights, civil rights and the U.S. Constitution be damned as merely a piece of paper insuring nothing, protecting no one but the wealthy and privileged.

Human rights, dignity and privacy be damned. So say our present leaders. Why not just cut to the chase and repeal all Constitutional amendments? I’m certain the guys whose images grace our coin and currency would be more than supportive of those currently working on just that.

In any event, the cameras are just wonderful and are good PR for the city. They’ll no doubt be useless against terrorism but will provide “We The People” with a resource to aid “ordinary Americans” in alleged instances of police misconduct. Or is such employment prohibited as I suspect? Perhaps the Attorney General has done any with “rules of discovery” in that littering is now a national security issue.

Thank you, Daily Press, for this opportunity to express my views. Hunter Thompson would be proud of you and your newspaper.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 1, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/060106.pdf?ref=smdp.com)