Remember when they first starting putting security cameras up everywhere? "Big Brother" we mumbled, joking, but with a slight sense of unease about their sudden prevalence, about the fact that there might be someone watching you at any given minute.
Now, we depend on them. We might even sue if you don't watch us.
WYOMING -- The husband of a woman who died of injuries she suffered in a purse-snatching said Meijer Inc. should have provided better security in the parking lot outside its Clyde Park Avenue SW store, where she was robbed.
James "Harv" Herrema filed a wrongful-death suit against Meijer in the April death of his 81-year-old wife, Margaret.
"(Meijer) knew, or should have known, that criminal activity in its Clyde Park Meijer store and surrounding parking lot was a frequent occurrence," attorney William Mills wrote in a lawsuit filed recently in Kent County Circuit Court.
The attorney for the victim's husband said he filed suit only after he obtained police reports regarding the Meijer store on Clyde Park, as well as others in Kent and Ottawa counties, which detailed criminal activity in the retailer's parking lots.
Mills said surveillance cameras aimed at the parking lot, with monitors inside in visible locations, were "largely ineffective."
The cameras left gaps in coverage and did not span the entire parking lot, he said. The lack of surveillance allowed the defendants to loiter in the lot "for a considerable length of time in search of a victim," the suit said.
Can store owners be held accountable for not "keeping us safe" on their property? When we traded our shopping anonymity for the promise of protection under surveillance, was there an unspoken expectation of complete security for doing so?
In light of the national news about spying on Americans and the constant, growing monitoring and tracking of our lives in general, this story brought to mind a passage in Shawshank Redemption- and I'm paraphrasing-
"These walls are funny. At first you hate 'em. Then you get used to them. Then you grow to depend on them."
Will we get to a point where we insist that the government watch us?