View From The Middle
Big Brother Is Here; And Maybe That's A Good Thing
By Charles Rogers

Your first reaction would be fear, I suppose. What is that structure up ahead? It stands about two or three stories high and it's crafted out of two-by-fours and creaky, wooden stairs that surround it from the outside, not in a circle, but a straight stair on all four sides.

The steps end at what you'd think was a tree house in any other circumstance; a crickety control tower from an old black and white movie. There is a small door a man can crawl through and where equipment can be installed, though if you think about the original use for the structure, not much equipment is needed.

I first saw one of these structures during a visit to a concentration camp in Poland years ago, well after the liberation of its World War II prisoners and after it had been transformed into a tourist site. Needless to say, the small structure, surrounded with sharp, twisted barbed wire, made an impact when you think that it housed a soldier whose only special equipment was a gun and a strong light with a straight beam that could shine on an escaping prisoner.

Even years after the Holocaust, the sight of that structure brought a sense of fear to some beholders; especially those who had seen it, or known about it, when it was used as a guard post, with a large searchlight and a man with a siren and a gun and a swastika on his sleeve.

Now such structures are here. In New York. It's been said that they are also in other cities, like Miami and Dallas and, oh, yes, we can't forget to mention their presence along the Arizona-Mexican border; right near where the immigration fence will be built. Can't forget that.

The towers are called "Sky Watch," and they're being used in some areas by the Border Patrol, so they say. It's being used here, however, by the NYPD.

We could transfix the words and call those who are manning the mobile towers the enforcement arm of the Establishment, I suppose, with George Orwell laughing in the background and saying "I told you so!" after having written of such impositions in his insightful novel "1984." (It looks like it's all coming true, doesn't it George?).

There are two ways to look at it, of course. The word "imposition" is quite usable here, especially in a society like ours where privacy is one of the guarantees of the Constitution. This two-to-three story structure is imposing on my life. I don't want a law enforcement officer watching me walk down the street. No, I don't have anything to hide...but I don't want a law enforcement officer watching me walk down the street. It's my prerogative to be private!!!

...On the other hand...

Supposing there's someone else watching me do my thing; and he's coming up behind me with a knife or a gun or, well, just downright bad intentions. I think I'd feel quite comforted knowing there's a law enf.... well, you get what I mean. I realize it's a two-way street. Are we being watched, like Orwell's Big Brother? Or are we being protected?

They put a Sky Watch on a street in Harlem recently, and it seemed to have a positive effect on crime, which dropped a few percentage points, ac-cording to statistics. Earlier in the year, they did the same thing in Crown Heights, with the same outcome. Now I hear they have about five more of them on order.

Either way, one can't deny it's an intrusion.

Are you comforted?