Choppy footage: San Francisco Police Department via the Chron

And speaking of cameras...

While Chicago has seen crime rates plummet to their lowest numbers in over four decades due to the windy city's Big Brother program, San Francisco's attempt at panopticon-ish camera security is failing. Ever since the 68 city-funded cameras started rolling, our city's surveillance program has resulted in a single arrest. That was over 19 months ago.

Why the lag, you ask? Well, for starters, "choppy" video streaming, above, at 16th and Mission streets. According to the Chronicle:

Run on a modest budget, Mayor Gavin Newsom's surveillance camera program has produced footage that is disjointed and less clear than the nearly seamless and sharp quality of video that the devices are capable of delivering, a Chronicle review found.

The difference can be dramatic, leaving police with less potential evidence. A review of videos taken last year by four cameras at 16th and Mission streets found a striking problem with the cameras' frame rate, or the number of images produced per second.

On average, the Mission District-perched cameras didn't even average one frame per second, making it difficult, if not impossible, to snap, trap and prosecute our city's most randy mischief makers. (Check out the undramatic footage here.)

Department of Telecommunications and Information Service, the city agency that runs the camera operation, claims that the ones on 16th and Mission "are not representative of the program as a whole," going on to say that they were "hamstrung for more than six months by a poor wireless connection, and that the connection was only recently upgraded." Quite the coincidence, yes?

One problem, we're told, is funding. The agency claims that "hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of additional data storage space for the footage" is needed for system improvements. And Newsom's request for 25 additional cameras could fall on deaf ears by the police commission, who has the authority to approve or disapprove the devices, if the Mayor doesn't figure out a way to stop the gritty yet ineffective slideshow presentation. Fast.