PETERS: It’s time to equip our schools with surveillance cameras

And rightly so.

Imagine if we just assumed these threats were all the work of pranksters, and then one turned out to be serious.

Better to be safe than sorry.

It’s clear these graffiti poets are just getting off on the media attention, but once again, imagine these threats weren’t covered in the media.

Parents would inundate us with calls for information about what’s happening at the children’s school.

We’re damned either way.

Civil libertarians won’t like this, but it’s time to talk about a robust system of surveillance cameras around our schools.

Certainly, you might be able to use them to tell whether Johnny or Joey threw the first punch.

But there are a lot of benefits to the cameras.

School administrators could certainly tell who vandalized their schools, something that costs the districts thousands every year.

They would act as a deterrent for said vandalism.

And they could potentially even be used to better determine what happened in the case of a fire, like the one that destroyed Parkcrest Elementary earlier this month.

Schools, as we have said before, are the hubs of their neighbourhoods and should be safeguarded as such.

More and more, surveillance cameras are becoming affordable and would help find the answers to the questions that are frustrating everyone this week.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

by James Peters

PETERS: It’s time to equip our schools with surveillance cameras

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