Froma Harrop: Stop the hysteria over Flock cameras

In the bad old crime days of New York City, I spent a Christmas Eve waiting outside an emergency room. Our foursome had been violently robbed in a subway station, and I was eager for the doctor's report on one member who'd suffered a concussion fighting off a mugger. Because someone got hurt, city detectives took the case seriously. They interviewed us and urged a trip to transit authority headquarters to look at mugshots. We did. Desperate to nail the two attackers, I gazed over page after page of faces. If this happened today, subway and street cameras would have identified the criminals almost immediately. Even if they were masked, cameras would have captured their dress, gait, body type, mode of attack — and tracked their escape route. Two years ago, a knife-wielding 25-year-old man raped a 13-year-old girl in a Queens park and forced her male schoolmate to watch. Days after the NYPD released images of the attacker, locals found him, and he was soon behind bars.