Excerpt:
Cameras are everywhere around Pittsburgh Mills.
“They call them the LPRs, license plate reader cameras,” Kuhns said.
The system patches the various retailers’ surveillance cameras into the police department and they’ve been very effective when it comes to catching alleged shoplifters.
“We have a lot of people who come up there and they steal televisions, big flat screens, computers, electronic devices,” he said.
But many times, these electric eyes reveal that in some cases, what’s being stolen aren’t big ticket items at all.
It’s only sensible and forward-thinking that police would help people in ways that would deter crime. Just as police should be directing drug addicts to rehabilitation resources, they should be directing food thieves to various welfare programs and ways to legitimately get cheap food. They should rather be enforcing other crimes.