Walmart security cameras - who are they looking for?

Originally posted by jeeze louise
Like in Museums many of the camera's that you see are "dummys" they are there to think that you are being watched.They are sometime more effective than an armed guard.

Yes, good point.

Please notice something in this thread...
It seems cameras are there for AFTER the crime, not to prevent it.

Cameras dont prevent anything, 7-11's still get robbed and so do banks, and people by now KNOW there are cameras at those places. so what is the camera REALLY for?

Its for after the fact...to try and give law enforcement another tool to make the bust and more evidence to seal the case with.
BIG BROTHER HAS ARRIVED!!!

A Camera cant jump off the roof and stop some perv from walking off with a kid....and unless someone is actually WATCHING live, which is rare, that tape wont be played and examined until HOURS after the incident when its called into question on IF it caught anything.

The government can/is putting cameras into public places, private companies are putting them up on private property, where is the camera free zone?
where is my right as a citizen to be left alone, not illegally put under survailaince (for no reason), and where is our expectation that we are innocent until proven guilty? I.E. why do 95% of the population lose these rights based on the deeds of a few? Why must i be watched when ive NEVER commited a crime (other than speeding and small things like that)

You do know that these "security" cameras, the good digital ones with full pan/tilt/zoom and hi def, like say traffic cameras can be used to violate your privacy by say....zooming in thru your apartment windows? I know ive seen people do this and have caught people getting dressed etc.
If you like your windows opened and curtains pulled back for the view and the breeze, just think that someone, somewhere, MIGHT be looking right at you from blocks away!!!

Where is our citizens rights being considered here,and who could even begin to enforce this? how would anyone ever even know?
What about private cameras being used for personal reasons, I.E. spying on a spouce or problem neighbor from your work cameras?

These cameras are soo wide open for abuse yet we rush ahead before thinking about any ramifications in order to cut crime? to cut property loss is more important than citizen rights of the majority of law abiding citizens?

Dont sell yourself out to big brother for anything, let alone the ILLUSION of security and crime prevention.

[edit on 14-9-2004 by CazMedia]

Truthfully, it is Wal-Mart's parking lot. They could have a camera for every single parking spot if they wished. Wal-Mart is sued so much that it's not even silly. Even by people falling in the parking lot and what not, those cameras are there to protect themselves.

Also, like someone pointed out about the girl being kid napped. People do all kinds of bad things in parking lots, hit and runs, kidnapping, fighting with people. And Camera's can't get every single spot, that's why the more you have the more chances to have to get blind spots. Your car has a blind spot, and so do camera's. Because no matter how many there are sometimes, things can still get away.

Like where I work at, you'd think for the area that it's in we'd have excessive camera's. I can sneak around the whole building almost and never get caught. I told my boss the paths I take. It also helps that the camera system only gets 1 frame per second. If you can do it they can be LUCKY to see a blur of your body.

Also, Camera believes in Dummy Camera's heavily. I used to work there as an Unloader so we knew the Loss Prevention folks. They use a lot of dummy cameras because like someone said before me, they are as good as a security guard standing there. All those lil black and white orbs hanging from the ceilings, some have cameras some don't. Only L.P. guys and top management know. But they love Dummy Camera's.

But Wal-Mart is evil. I swear that Store Managers, District Managers and others sit around in Rituals each taking turns drinking blood from Sam Waldon's Skull. They have posters of him ALL over the break room walls, in the hall ways. And anything they say starts with 'Well Sam Waldon...' Part of the reason I don't work there anymore. That and they gave me 6.50 for what Animal Right Activist wouldn't let a Mule do.

Camara's are probably more common than people think.
Near Church St. Station in downtown Orlando Fl. (W. South St. I think) is a room with a bank of monitors (16??) watched by a cop. I watched those monitors from an Indian restorant, they we're right next door with just a narrow ally (4-5') between. Each monitor cycled through, if I remember (this was around '95), 4 different views of the downtown Orlando area.
This place was pretty hidden.
You could only see in from the restorant. They had black drapes up in the restorant and the ally way was unexcesible. But the "monitoring room" had a big window on the ally side.
It was a total accident we sat at that window. And being the nosy type I had pulled the drape aside to look out.

I lived there for a couple of years. I'd heard rumours of cameras but didn't really believe them cause you can't SEE any cameras. They have them well hidden.

i dunno who they lookin 4 but i know one thing.... walmart is taking over the world.... THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! lol seriously.. they recently put a walmart in MEXICO and i mean who needs a damn walmart in mexico ?

Wasn't Walmart in trouble about RFID's in some of their products or
something. I seem to remember hearing about it on C2C am.

Here's some new info that's interesting. I did some traveling, and just out of curiosity checked out a couple more Walmarts.

Missoula, MT - 6 cameras on building, 4 on lampposts

Kalispell, MT - 8 on building, 0 on lamposts

Mocow, ID - 6 on building, 2 on lamposts

Seems that the store in Spokane has a lot more than others in the area. Maybe the store manager is paranoid.

yea yea yea ok they have alot of cameras on the outside, but have you ever noticed how many they have on the inside...OMG i counted alteast 50 cameras 50!!!

in one of their stores, no if i am a security guy watching the videos hell, im not gonna watch 50 freaken camera vids!!!50!!!!OMG

Originally posted by Intelearthling
Remember the little girl who was kidnapped and killed in Florida several months ago?

Her low-life killer probably would be still walking the streets had it not been for the cameras posted at the car-wash where he was video-taped abducting the girl.

I agree with you! This would be helpful in this case only. BUT- how do we know this is their purpose?? Specially Walmart

I don't know if any of you have seen "Wal-Mart-The High Cost of Low Prices" but I highly reccomend it and you can watch it for free on Google video. In the documentary they talk of the many reasons they have all those cameras, there are the obvious reasons, loss prevention and insurance liability reasons.

However, Wal-Mart hates worker's unions. There is no chance of keeping the record profits if their workers began unionizing. The documentary showed one WM store and spoke of the employees efforts to unionize. Someone had placed a sign that stated "We need a union" in the break room, that day there were corporate suits snooping around the store. The cameras are there to watch the employees and find out which ones are the trouble makers with the goal of replacing them with new employees. The "trouble makers" are often followed by corporate spies, notes are taken and profiles drawn up.

I've always said, beware any employer that says they have a "high turn around".

It is a little odd that a company who gets most of it's products from a communist country should be so opposed to unionization. We should all boycott Wal-Mart if it's at all possible, though I know in some areas it's impossible to not go to Wal-Mart.

WATCH THAT DOCUMENTARY!!

Wow this is a crazy theory you have going on here...


The cameras are to help fight and deter crime, nothing more . Ive been in the security room and you would be suprised on how many more cameras are actually inside walmart compared to outside, not to mention the undercover security patrolling the aisles.

There is so much crime that goes in parking lots its actually quite nice that walmart has at least 25 cameras outside(most car jackings take place in parking lots, christmas is just a crazy time for thieves stealing the goods from cars). It helps catche people who break into cars as well people who steal from walmart and get away in a car(focuses on the license plates)

I was a security guard at target for a while, and we had a pretty large parking lot. Our store was right on a bustop coming from a major city so we were an extremely high traffic store, and our parking lot had 3 PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) Camera's stationed on the outside of the building. These 3 camera's were sufficient for capturing anything and everything going on in the parking lot, including the ability to zoom in on any license plate, and inside any car in the parking lot.

Do I think this is a conspiracy designed to take your rights away? No way, those cameras are probably stationary digital cameras with most likely low resolution, not the high resolution PTZ cameras we had at target. Plus more than half of them are probably dummy cameras.

Do you people really think that Wal Mart is tracking you? Witht he volume of people coming in and out of the store it would be impossible unless they knew specifically some sort of wrong doing and what to look for so they could go back and try to piece together what happened. Or unless they were monitoring it live and noticed something out of place.

Wal-mart conpspiracy?

How easy would it be to fence off every wal-mart when the NWO comes?

I think if/when the police state thing happens, it'll become like the new millenium version of the russian worker's markets. I don't buy anything from wal-mart, and have only been there about 3 times in the past 2 years because where i was there was only wal-mart. Now that's scary. It's a psyop to ge the sheeples to engage in rampant blind consumerism. They don't need microwave beams in the ceiling, they do it with designing the entire store layout to encourage you to buy as much useless crap as you can carry.

I've always noticed that they usually do have quite a few cameras, most inside, but a lot outside also.

Originally posted by Montana
Here's some new info that's interesting. I did some traveling, and just out of curiosity checked out a couple more Walmarts.

Missoula, MT - 6 cameras on building, 4 on lampposts

Kalispell, MT - 8 on building, 0 on lamposts

Mocow, ID - 6 on building, 2 on lamposts

Seems that the store in Spokane has a lot more than others in the area. Maybe the store manager is paranoid.

And those are just the ones you saw. My guess is you missed the other half of them. Very common to see cameras on shopping centers as well as in them along within the stores.

As another pointed out some homes have more then 10 and that is just a home so 26 to 50 for one walmart is nothing when you compare the two.

I am not sure, but wasn't a lady caught beating her kid in a Walmart parking lot last yet in Indiana by one of those cams? Might not even have been a walmart but thanks to the camera they did catch her

You guys are seriously paranoid. Go spend your energy on something more useful. And to the OP i hope you dont bring your daughter into the crazy paranoia states you get into thats just unhealthy.

just think if your daughter was kidnapped and thrown into a trunk inthe parking lot.. the camera could catch the plate #, and the type of car

I have stopped buying from Wal-Mart.

(click here) www.spychips.com...

It gives some excellent info about how Wal-Mart is tracking their products into your home.

To have that many cameras does not make any sense to me, but I wouldn't doubt that the reasoning is to give their customers a sense of security. Whether it's Wal-Mart or any other company in my opinion it isn't for the sake of the customer. Crime will still happen and these companies can still be sued by someone and nobody saw a thing unless it is in the companies best interest.

I'm not sure about where you live, but where I've lived people get robbed, kidnapped, murdered, raped, beaten up, carjacked and every perversion you can imagine in parking lots.

In most cases, a lawsuit against the company is filed and it costs companies big time, so it is in their best interest to keep the security cameras running to help keep customers feeling safe and to help cover their own butts. Many companies such as WalMart also have security guards patrolling the parking lot.

You may not be aware of this, but there are a lot of crimes that are solved by law enforcement who can follow suspects as they go about their dirty deeds getting themselves taped on security cameras.

WalMart and other businesses also lose millions and millions of dollars each year to shoplifters, so having cameras everywhere, inside and out, combined with plainclothes security officers patrolling the stores helps stores to save big-time buck that would otherwise be lost to criminals.

I'm not fond of being taped in so many locations while going about my business, but since I don't engage in illegal activity and because society is so overrun with scumbags, I take some comfort in their presence.

My license plate was stolen the other day and in what appears to have been a matter of minutes the thieves ran a red light with my tags attached to their car and now I and the police have a photograph of the offenders in our possession.

I've always disliked the red light cameras, even though I've never been caught speeding or running a red light. Now, I have to admit that I'm really glad that the knuckleheads who stole my plates and probably the car they were driving were photographed committing yet another crime.

Of course, I'm the one who has to go to court and prove my innocence and incur the cost and inconvenience of replacing my plates, which, I have to admit, are free, so I only had to pay a small administrative fee for a temporary tag.

This happened at the Walmart in Mechanicsville, Virginia
last week. My Mother was checking out her groceries. She was by
herself, and had around $90 worth of groceries that day.
About 1/2 of her groceries were scanned, when all of a
sudden a well dressed African American woman approached
her.

The woman asked my Mom to please hand her the chewing gum.
Mom would have to turn her back from the woman in order
to do this. Oh, and Mom's pocket book was in the basket
(a big no-no). Mom grabbed the gum to hand it to the woman,
and the woman said, no, it's the other one. Again Mom turned
her back and grabbed the other one. This went on 4 times.
Finally Mom turned around and said "This has to be it." Mom
was probably getting a bit irritated at this point. Well, when
she suddenly turned around, the woman had Mom's wallet in her
hand. The woman saw Mama looking at her wallet and said, "Oh,
is this YOUR wallet?" "It was on the floor." My Mom is nieve about
these things, and thanked the woman for finding her wallet on the
floor, because she could not pay for her groceries without it. The
woman even said "check and make sure everything is in still in there."
That's an odd question to ask when supposidly the person's wallet just
now fell on the floor. Why wouldn't everything still be there? Mom had
sense enough to know not to pull out her money in front of the woman,
and briefly looked in it, and said, yes, everything is there. After that the
woman took the gum and left the area.

When Mama was driving home is when she realized something didn't
seem right. She knew that her wallet was in her zipped up purse, so there
is no way it could have been on the floor. I told Mama that the gum
request was a ploy to give the woman time enough to go in her purse
and get the wallet. Mom's wallet is rather long, so it was probably
hard for the woman to get it out quickly.

It also makes you wonder if the cashier was "in on it." She had to see and
hear what was going on.

Walmart needs to beef up security inside, right under their noses.

So your Tax dollers can pay them back. The loss.
You cach one and tell them that you saw it and watsh them they will let them go.
It is strang no one has nottist this. You look and see.