Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, announced during his state of the city address that citizens can now send pictures and videos from their picture phones to 911 in New York City. Bloomberg explained that the more information the police have, the easier it will be to fight crime. This system that NYC is adopting was first put in place in Indiana and is in addition to the $9.1 million dollar project to use video cameras to fight crime by installing 500 video cameras in 200 locations. (Information taken from Newsday.com)Will the ability for citizens to send 911 pictures from their camera phones help police to fight crime, or will it clog up the system and take more time to sort and manage the information than its worth. I think that allowing citizens to send pictures to 911 is a novel idea and there are many benefits to this if citizens do not abuse the system, but I think that this plan could backfire and could create more confusion than it is worth if citizens send too many pictures and videos without providing the proper information to the photos, and I also believe that some photos can be misleading and could confuse 911. It will be interesting to see if this will help 911 responders in the long run, or if it will create more confusion and headaches for the people who sort and organize the data.
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