City Council approved a proposal for a security camera to be installed downtown at the intersection of Tenth and Cherry streets. Thankfully this camera will be funded by a donation from Keep Columbia Safe, because the taxpayer dollars spent on such cameras last year have gone to waste.

According to the Columbia city budget, the city spent $25,000 on eight new cameras last fall. The installations were mostly the result of a campaign by an advocacy group that used a sad individual crime anecdote as the basis for its argument for cameras. Yet when taxpayer money is involved, decisions have to be made according to logical reasoning and statistical evidence, not emotional appeal.

The cameras have done nothing to discourage or stop serious crime. They are not efficiently placed to do so, and even if dozens of cameras were added to the downtown area, there would still be multiple locations hidden from the cameras’ sight.

Additionally, the presence of security cameras does relatively little to frighten criminals. A camera cannot stop a crime in action; it can only sit in place and record while a citizen is robbed or assaulted. That is why banks don’t invest solely in security cameras for protection, but rather also invest in security guards who can actively step in and stop a criminal from acting. For example, in this week’s shooting near Boone Tavern & Restaurant, it’s highly unlikely a camera would have prevented the shooter from releasing the trigger.

It seems as if the City of Columbia and Keep Columbia Safe had no strategy behind their planning of where to install downtown cameras, yet assumed the cameras would be a good fix-all solution. It would be much more effective for crime prevention to examine crime on a case by case basis, and if cameras are to be used at all, there must be some research-backed method for their design and implementation.

The money that was spent on these cameras could be put back into the city budget and used in other areas, even other methods of crime prevention. Sure, it’s cheaper to simply install cameras, but you cannot put a monetary price on a life.

There is no way for the installation of downtown cameras to bring concrete results, and the taxpayer dollars have gone to waste because of it. Columbia’s government reacted to one-sided sentimental appeal, and the citizens of Columbia have paid for it. If this camera program can be rescinded at all, it should be. Our money can be put to much better use.