I’m in the office five minutes and the phone rings, a businessman buddy on the way to a meeting where he will try to pry venture capital away from its rightful owners so that it might instead be invested in his tech firm. But what he wants to talk about is cameras in the city of Lancaster, and specifically, how he’s opposed to them.

Opposed to them even in the wake of the lastest shooting, in which a 21-year-old city man was killed and a 2-year-old girl grazed by some of the shots fired at the victim. It was, according to the New Era’s report, the fourth shooting in just two days. And the long, hot summer hasn’t even begun.

I am, I should say up front, a pretty big proponent of the pan-tilt-zoom Bosch security cameras that are being installed throughout the city. Which might seem incongruous given my opposition to warrantless wiretapping and other police-state like initiatives undertaken by Our Leader in the “war on terror.” But, simply, I draw a distinction between public spaces and private ones. I do not believe that the government has the right to peer into your private life - your phone calls, your e-mails - unless there is probable cause, so much so that officials have managed to convince a court to give them a warrant.

But as to the security cameras - well, don’t they merely see the same things that any cop, walking a beat down your street or even sitting his his cruiser, would be able to see?

I understand the concern over “who is watching the watchers”; specifically, here in Lancaster the Community Safety Coalition is in charge of monitoring the feeds for the cameras, and the cops also have access to them. City officials have discussed the issue of oversight, and maybe, in order to mollify those opposed to the cameras on this basis, it’s something worth revisiting.

But my caller’s critique was broader: We are installing cameras, he said, in order to control crime, and that’s destined to fail. Unless we address the root causes - the poverty, the lack of legitimate job prospects in the minority community, the issue of recidivism and other related things - then the cameras are nothing but a Band-Aid; the shootings themselves will continue. All the cameras will do is allow the police to make arrests faster, and with more certainty.

I said: Well, maybe that’s enough.

Maybe, in fact, that’s all we’re going to get. Because I agree that the structural causes of these crimes should be addressed, but in fact society has addressed them, or tried to. Have we done enough to address poverty? Probably not. Could more be done to help those leaving prison stay out of it? I’m sure.

At the same time, though, even if you are somehow able to address these things, move the ball down each of these individual fields by small margins, there are others factors to contend with. What of a pop culture that glorifies rebelliousness as exemplified by the likes of 50 Cent? What of the availability of guns, the lack of positive male role models in the most at-risk communities? You know the drill. And you also know how unlikely it is that we, as a society, are going to be capable of addressing all of these ills to the extent that it makes a real, tangible difference. For even in the best-case scenario, where funding isn’t a problem and all of our initiatives actually work, you’re talking years before there’s a palpable return on investment, in the form of fewer shootings - if, in fact, that return ever comes. Meanwhile, that does absolutely nothing to turn down the heat during this particular long, hot summer.

So are cameras the “answer?” Of course not. They are but a tool, though a fairly effective one. But had there been a camera on the 100 block of Juniata Street, or in its general vicinity, the police very well might have more than they have now. They might have video of the event itself; they might have the proof to send this shooter, at least, to jail.

We can work on the entrenched societal causes, and must. But cameras, right now, are about as good as we’re going to get, so they’ll do. And they’ll have to.