That's the real difficulty with these systems. A decade or so ago Atlanta had the most surveillance cameras per capita in the western world but inevitably each time there was a crime near one, it would turn out that the video wasn't available. Sometimes because the cameras were broken and never fixed. Sometimes because the feeds aren't recorded and no one was watching them. Sometimes the recording equipment was broken. They had endless cameras everywhere but hardly anyone was watching them. It was another case of a government that loves new initiatives that lets them spend a bunch of capital but then doesn't allocate the required operating funds to keep things going.

Companies like Ring already use machine learning and related buzzwords to help filter doorbell camera feeds. That might be the big thing that these huge networks of government cameras in public areas need to meet their full potential (good or bad).