Vigilante - I'm Toying With The Idea of Becoming One

[LastVanguard]

Good evening, all,

I'd like to get your thoughts on an idea that I've had for a while now, and after some planning with several other people, is now starting to look like it could become a possibility if I wanted it to be.

Some backstory first:

I work for an Internet Service Provider in my hometown, and service the downtown area with high speed (up to 1GB speed) Internet. To do this, we use radio-based relays between buildings. The reason why we've done this instead of running fiber lines in conduits under the streets is because to use those conduits you have to pay usage fees to the City Government, and those fees aren't cheap. The radios we use provide fiber-level Internet speeds, and we can use them without getting charged by the city - quite an ingenious plan if I do say so myself.

With these radio relays (they look like satellite dishes), we also install cameras on an elevated post facing the radios. This is done so that if someone climbs up onto the roof and tries to steal a radio relay, we caught them on video doing it, and can provide a high-resolution picture to the police of their face, clothing, and body composition.

Alright, now for my idea:

What if we added another 4-8 obscure cameras facing around the top of our networked buildings, not just the one we have currently facing our radios. We could use them for keeping an eye on how bad street traffic is, watching out for traffic accidents, checking weather conditions on each street, etc. Of particular interest to me, we'd use them to keep an eye on crime in the downtown area at night (barfights, purse snatching, mugging, public intoxication, etc.)

Our current camera system once spotted a guy harassing a woman in an alleyway near my workplace, and I was able to quickly rush out and chase him off, saving the girl who would have otherwise been his victim. The system could work on a larger scale to help notify the police of such incidents, or give me the visibility to stop some things like this from happening, since I'd have a faster response time than the police would.

Crime in the downtown area is something I'm pretty passionate about, since one of my sisters was once drugged and raped at a bar here, and a system like this could have prevented (or at least ID'd) the person responsible. I don't have an excessive interest in becoming a vigilante (I'd rather leave throwing your life on the line to the law enforcement officials that get payed for it), but it's possible that I could grab my mace, tazer, and police baton and prevent some crime from happening if I was in a close enough vicinity to it. At the very least, I could try to hold off a fight/crime until the cops show up to get things under control.

It would take several thousand dollars and several months to implement such a system, but it could then be tested and potentially revealed, but not opened, to the general public if it works well. Knowing that you're being videotaped in the majority of the downtown area would heavily deter a lot of the crime that takes place from time to time here.

Thoughts? Is this a terribly stupid idea, or is it something that you think could potentially work?

Cheers,
LastVanguard

[Skipachu]

As the next step to Psycho Pass, I approve :)

[Qualtz]

Well, as long as you don't accidentally kill the offenders or otherwise be killed yourself. Also, it shouldn't be revealed to the public at any cost if we're talking about effectivity with this plan.

[LastVanguard]

Well, as long as you don't accidentally kill the offenders or otherwise be killed yourself. Also, it shouldn't be revealed to the public at any cost if we're talking about effectivity with this plan.

Both valid points. I'm starting to look at throwing this up on one building to start with, see if it's worth it, and then start expanding from there.

[Prudii]

Well LV got to say if you try to do that at least remember that you must avoid to kill the criminal, you must be willing to even become the bad guy if needed and lastly you must know when you will no longer be needed


In the Immortal words "If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can't stop you, then you become something else entirely." Ra's Al Ghul

[Keyorempi]

Sorry but this seems like a stupid idea. What are you gonna do if criminals are armed, and you have to use lethal force? If you lack the legal authority then you would just be a murderer, you know that. Being a vigilant would mean that your right and wrong concept of morality would be imploded under pressure thus becoming morally indistinguishable. Your best bet is to join the cops, don't you agree?

[LastVanguard]

If you lack the legal authority then you would just be a murderer, you know that. Being a vigilant would mean that your right and wrong concept of morality would be imploded under pressure.

Don't interpret this as an attack on your views, because you raise a legitimate point. Allow me to offer my perspective coming from the opposite end of the spectrum.

America is desperately trying to go down the road right now of removing personal protective power from individual civilians, and placing that protective power purely in the hands of the government and law enforcement. The core problem with this, as is evidenced by the fact that crimes still occur on a large scale, is that law enforcement is stretched too thin to handle every situation. If you look back in history, many countries historically put a LOT of personal protective power in the hands of their citizens because when accompanied by responsibility, citizens are capable of keeping a tremendous amount of order. America did exactly the same thing for hundreds of years (remember the term "Minutemen", anyone?).

(I feel VERY safe in a room where everyone is peaceable yet is carrying a gun, as opposed to a room where the only individual with a gun is a soliditary law enforcement officer.)

Being a vigilante isn't so much trying to escape the "confines" of the law or to weasel out of morality, but rather to carry out a civic duty to your fellow man - as long as you're doing it for the right reasons. After all, if the police could sufficiently handle these kinds of situations, there'd be no need for personal civic defense.

I'm not quite sure how morality comes into play in this kind of circumstance, as you've described it. If I have to take a guilty life in order to protect other innocents, I will. I say that with the understanding that most people would do the same thing in a situation that required it. That's not murder - it's self-defense.