Fighting Crime From Above?

This privately owned CCTV camera was supposed to monitor patrons outside of Lawrence's Grill and Bar.  It soon served a second purpose -- as contradictory evidence to an altercation with a local Passaic police officer.

Holloway, who is on medication for schizophrenia, joined more than 80 others outside that community's city hall Saturday to demand that Officer Joseph R. Rios III be fired.

The tape shows Holloway, 49, waiting outside Lawrence's Grill and Bar restaurant in Passaic when a police cruiser pulled up and a female officer asked him to zip up his sweatshirt. Holloway appears to comply, but Rios jumps out and begins hitting him with his fists and a baton.

His mother, Betty Holloway, said that without the surveillance tape, the truth about what happened would never have been revealed.

If cameras are supposed to make us safer, the question that remains is safer from who?  It seems that every week evidence surfaces that shows civil service workers aren't acting very civil at all.