I see a lot of people putting the "big brother" spin on this and talking about watching employees. I certainly agree that watching your employees' every move accomplishes nothing.

On the other hand, if you run a business like a gas station, convenience store, fast food restaurant, etc then watching the public areas and the outside of business with cameras is a good idea. As for who monitors the footage, that's simple: there's no need to monitor it 24/7. Just review it when you need to (ie if something happened).

Normally, I'd happily jump on the Comcast bashing train. But as they like to tout, their ability to put together a turnkey solution has helped attract more business to the Green Light program here in Detroit. There are other components to the program besides the surveillance (ie increased lighting, and visible signage that they are a part of the program). All together, it makes customers feel safer at their business, and discourages troublemakers.

Some people are put off by the additional surveillance and the idea that the police can see them, but others like the feeling of safety and are more willing to stop in an area where they might not otherwise. Speaking with various police officers in my area, they have admitted that while some businesses experience small drop in customers initially, things usually rebound as the businesses attract a better class of customer.

In Detroit, even with the cameras feeding to police headquarters, it isn't a 24/7 big brother scenario. Let's face it, everyone has better things to do, including the police. They're not scrutinizing the footage for every person who jaywalks or litters or "forgot" to renew their license plate. However, if something does happen at a Green Light location, the police are able to quickly access footage (and view it in realtime if the incident is still occurring) and the outcome is typically a lot better.

Imagine two scenarios:

Scenario A:
Someone is robbed at a gas station in the middle of the night. When the police arrive, all they have is the description of a person or vehicle from the victim which may not be very accurate. The next morning, the police are able to get ahold of the owner of the station and have him pull the security footage. Assuming it's even usable (ie good quality, good lighting/nigh vision), by the time the police get it the perpetrator is long gone.

Scenario B:
Someone is robbed at a gas station in the middle of the night. As the squad car is being dispatched, someone at police headquarters is able to access high-quality footage of the incident and provide a reliable description of the perpetrator and/or their vehicle to the responding officers and other officers in the area. An officer notices someone matching the description walking a few blocks from where the incident happened, stops them, and is able to make an arrest before they've had hours or days to disappear.

I'll second that. The school I attended found all kinds of creative fees and surcharges. There were lab fees and possibly some form of flat-rate surcharge each semester for being an engineering major. Then, for a lot of the major-related courses there was the per-credit-hour "upper level engineering premium". So while my "tuition" may have been the same as liberal arts major, I'm fairly certain that I was paying more.

gman003 is correct on all counts. Photos and GPS coordinates make it easier for the workers to find the problem (some, but certainly not all, of the workers aren't very motivated & don't exactly look hard). It also allows anyone to see tickets, comment on them, or even reopen closed tickets. If something gets marked as resolved when it wasn't, any citizen can reopen that ticket and add a comment saying that is wasn't done.

Years ago, Detroit has a 311 system that was supposed to track complaints and give you a ticket number. Besides the obvious disadvantages of the phone system, a number of city departments did not participate so you never knew who to call. If you had to call the department directly, it wasn't always immediately obvious what number to call to report a problem and there was zero accountability.

As Dan mentioned in the article, the app does get results. The resolution times can vary depending on what type of issue it is and what department handles that. I've seen dumping issues take up to a week to get someone out to investigate but I've also seen pothole issues resolved within a couple days (previous response time was often measured in months if you were lucky).

I don't know how true it is, but I've also been told that the mayor watches the system and uses it to hold department heads accountable. I do know if something does go unresolved for a long time, I have proof that I can take to my city council member. Even though the departments don't technically report to the city council, getting a call from a council member's office does seem to motivate them.