Ceci n’est pas une caméra vidéo

This sign greets the visitor at the entrance of Hulda Crooks Park in Loma Linda, California:

Now, as we’ll see in future No No Project entries, video surveillance is the new black when it comes to municipal law enforcement.

It’s what’s known in military and police parlance as a force multiplier—a tool that multiplies the effective strength of a given unit. Having a police-monitored camera like this one enables the operator to keep an eye on multiple places without having expensive police officers all over the place.

The police love this stuff. Easily frightened people also love it, but we won’t get into the ethical and societal problems that constant surveillance raises. I would just like to point out one thing:

I have a couple of reactions here.

1. If your icon is so poorly designed that it requires a label plastered on it letting us know what the icon is, the icon has failed. QED.
2. Isn’t the identification of the icon obvious by the fact that the rest of the sign is warning us about a video camera?

If you’re going to go the Big Brother route, at least make it a friendly dystopian intrusion like at next-door Redlands’ Prospect Park:

Now doesn’t that make you feel better?

No Loitering

There are a couple of definitions of “loiter” in the Collaborative International Dictionary of English, and neither of them have anything to do with goiters.

(“Oiter” is a very funny sound. Oiter oiter oiter! Oiter in the court! I was just following Oiters. Law and Oiter was just canceled. Anyhow.)

So, to loiter:

1. To be slow in moving; to delay; to linger; to be dilatory; to spend time idly; to saunter; to lag behind.
2. To wander as an idle vagrant.

In a puritanical society where anything pleasurable is immediately suspect, not to mention a capitalistic system where moving slowly is a sin, it is perhaps little wonder that idling or lingering somewhere is frowned upon. “Why, lingering makes up most of the word ‘malingering’!”

(Can I take your Oiter?! OK, I’m done.)

Of course, loitering isn’t just tsk-tsk’d — it’s a crime, and one of the go-to commandments for sign-makers and bureaucrats around the country. To the point of absurdity.

Best just to keep circling the block until your bus shows up, then sprint for the door before they drive off.

What is a law-abiding Starbucks consumer to do? I feel guilty standing there reading the sign!

Now they’re getting serious. Just keep on walking through the park and don’t look up.

On the bright side, by this point you’re beyond caring about prosecution.