In This Week's City Paper

In the cover feature, photographer Frank Klein and writer Stephen Janis get watched, along with neighborhood residents, by the Baltimore Police Department’s ever-growing number of surveillance cameras. Andrew Byrne is monitoring the cameras at Manifestor.org. More anarchic action against the cameras can be found at the Independent Media Center. Andrew Buchanan, at The Christian Science Monitor, has a good article about similar cameras in Chicago. And city streets aren’t the only place in the Baltimore area these cameras are sprouting, though most others don’t come with flashing blue lights. The Towson Times’ Bryan P. Spears has an update on the effort to put surveillance cameras in Baltimore County shopping center parking lots; turns out, they cost a lot.

In Mobtown Beat, Edward Ericson Jr. finds plenty of Baltimoreans--more so than usual--who say they’ve been locked up overnight or longer for no good reason. Over at The Sun, columnist Gregory Kane has been covering this, too. For example, this one, from about a month ago. And, of course, there’s a politician hoping to investigate, in this case state Del. Jill P. Carter. She’s even got a petition.

And Christina Royster-Hemby does some reading at Karibu Books, soon to open at Security Square Mall in Woodlawn.

In A&E, Bret McCabe makes friends with the folks behind new local publishing imprint Creative Capitalism. Mikael Wood Q&As Baltimore native Jon Theodore (formerly of Golden), now playing drums for the Mars Volta. And J. Bowers puts the lens cap on the Baltimore Camera Club members’ show at Baltimore Gallery.