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I'm honestly surprised that businesses in shady areas don't have ubiquitous cameras around their properties and signs that "just do your crime one block away, that's all I ask". (Presumably that invites vandalism and there are consequently practical issues, but has no one pulled this off?)

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With cars, you have a license plate that will usually lead you to the owner. Identifying some random person, possibly with a hood, on noisy camera night vision is a lot harder; when you don't have a reasonably small pool of suspects, it's basically impossible.

Even if it would be possible to identify people with a combination of cell phone area warrants and/or by following all cameras around, this level of effort would be far too high (and too invasive) for small crimes like theft and vandalism.

It's often a small pool of "suspects" though. Like "same group/person it was the last 3 times".

I think most camera operators make peace with the idea that randos / one offs probably can't be identified. What really aggravates people is repeated behaviour. Many people who install cameras particularly want to know "am I being targeted" vs "this is a random thing".

Most criminals will just cover their face to avoid CCTV.

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