What's the Deal With Safe City?

I live a block off a busy street in a moderately large US city. My local neighborhood is pretty ghetto and the bus-line had problems with young people commiting crime. I noticed in Feb. several large new cameras installed at the intersection near my place. It turns out a few million city or state (Iforgot) dollars was allocated to the Safe City Program and CCTV and I believe audio rec (for gunshots?) was installed all along this busy street. There were already cameras and now there's considerably more (literally 9 on one intersection). Apparently, Safe City Program is an "initiative" that partners local businesses and law enforcement in preventing crime,etc. In My city, there was essentially no discussion about this and received maybe one brief mention in a local paper even with a multi-million $ tab.
This Safe City has been adopted in several small to large urban/metro areas across the US.
If you go to the Safe City Website you can see the many large corporate partners notably Target and tech companies but (as far as I can tell) No location headquarters to visit, no listed coordinators/directors/employees.

Safe City Website

I'm wondering if anyone has any more info on Safe City and if there is surreptitious elements involved.
My understanding is that this program is tech based and works with local businesses and they would assist in video surveillance. Based on this, you could essentially be monitored/filmed driving to a local business, entering said business, shopping IN said business, paying, leaving, driving home and all this could be viewed live on a computer somewhere. Is this accurate, inaccurate, a conspiracy, nothing?
Safe City looks pretty big brother-esque.
Should this be an issue?

So apparently nobody really cares but I'd like to follow up on this post with some more information. What I find most puzzling is the lack of criticism this "initiative" has received especially in the 20+ safecity communities. As stated above, I am unaware of this "initiative's" Headquarter location but since it's Target's baby, its probably located in the Target corporate office at
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Phone: 612-304-6073
I'm not surprised this locale in downtown Minneapolis coincides with a Multi-Million dollar Safecity "initiative" installation. Crime in this area has been markedly reduced but
I've seen released CCTV video of downtown Minneapolis crimes (used in court cases) and its a bit frightening to see the integrated ability of the network to follow and zoom-in on a suspect.
According to the Corporate Partners Page of the Safecity site and within the Corporate "expectations document" pdf, Target seems to have dictatorial powers in this "initiative"
with the final say on:
" – Community selection or approval**
Community selections will be reviewed with all corporate partners on an
annual basis
– Program and project management
Presentations, collateral, timelines, problem solving, event planning
– Communication
Safe City Web site, national press releases, national conferences"
The ability of Target Corp. to decide which communities will become "Safecities" might indicate a conflict of interest. This claim is evidenced by the fact that ALL, repeat ALL current "Safecity communities" have one or more Target Stores.
www.mysafecity.com...
sites.target.com...
I guess these communities can be grateful for their local Corp. giving back to the community. So the next you time you're being monitored by their CCTVs, or ALPRs you can send them a courteous salutation of thanks- five fingers or one.

A nice "NEW!" addition to the Safecity site is the "Safe City Crime Prevention
Guides"-
www.mysafecity.com...
they're quite humorous, take for example the "Preventing Public Disorder" handbook pdf. which offers these methods in curbing "Individuals Looking for Work (day laborers)"----
• Establish and promote policies and sanctions regarding acceptable
public behavior among day laborers, such as littering or public
drinking
• Modify landscaping to improve surveillance or dissuade individuals
from loitering
• Install call-out only public telephones or remove phones all together
• Improve lighting in parking lot and building exterior

Now I'm not trying to blow the off some massive Big Brother-Corporate conspiracy but would like to hear some thoughts/concerns of this "community based initiative"
It also provides those who worry about police state stuff explanations on the cameras in their local safecity-community.

Here's some generic profiles on Steve Persian, "Safe City national program manager at Target Corporation,"--
www.spoke.com...
networking.bizjournals.com...

Here his name is on the list of SafeZone Collaborative Advisory Commitee:
www.mplssafezone.org...