RANCHO CUCAMONGA—The city of Rancho Cucamonga and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department are stepping up video surveillance around Victoria Gardens.
The video cameras already in place at the popular shopping mall will be augmented with 20 more of the devices.
The images captured are displayed at a viewing station located within the sheriff’s department’s Kew Avenue quarters adjoining the AMC Theater and lying south of Cultural Center Drive and north of North Main Street.
From that vantage, a trained and quick-eyed deputy will scan the multiplex of monitors, looking for any indication of trouble or overt criminality.
The cameras are being strategically located near spots that have already shown themselves to be likely scenes of illicit activity. The deputy at the monitor, who will be tied directly into the 911 system, will be able to monitor the locations where crime has been reported, note descriptions of suspects and relay that information to a deputy or deputies in the field who have been dispatched to the scene, potentially aiding in the apprehension of a suspect or suspects.
In addition, the high-resolution cameras will record activity at all of the locations under electronic surveillance, allowing an after-the-fact review of events and suspects who escaped real time notice in the commission of their illegal acts.
The sheriff’s department and the city refer to the videotaping capability as a force multiplier and have declined to disclose the equipment’s cost or the cost of mounting it. Nor would officials discuss the locations where the cameras will be installed.
While city and sheriff’s officials and others hail the videographic devices as a safety and security enhancement, others see them as further evidence of the intrusion of government and the extension of mass surveillance,  authoritarian presence, and oppressive control of the population as was expounded upon in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four.