Some folks just aren’t cut out to be criminals, or so it would appear. We may be wrong, but we always felt to be successful at it, you have to try to outwit law enforcement. Most fail, but you have the feeling they at least made an attempt to pull off their caper without being caught.

We’re amazed, week in and week out, to see surveillance cameras clearly pointing out someone who has just robbed a store, held up a bank, or tried to run off with a woman’s purse just outside a department store. Hello! What part of the term “surveillance camera’’ don’t they get? The whole world is now on camera. We’re being watched both inside and outside of stores, in parking lots, on public and private piers, at sports events, in motel lobbies, everywhere!

We sit here in our living room while TV newsmen tell us about a theft at a Maine place of business or somewhere else in the country, and watch in amazement as the thief appears in full view on the video, face, eyes, hair, clothing, mannerisms exposed for all the viewing audience to see. Didn’t it occur to them that someone — actually, probably lots of someones — would recognize them? If they wanted to get caught, why didn’t they come right out and say so?

It’s probably quicker to say where surveillance cameras aren’t than where they are. They’re being used by almost every branch of law enforcement and businesses the world over. Many homeowners use them, now, too. Not too many years ago, one camera mounted on a local pier helped track an inebriated man’s last suspected path of travel which unfortunately determined that he fell overboard and drowned.

Most of us accept surveillance cameras as a part of our life and realize that there are few places we can go without being tracked. Sometimes this is good, others times, not so good. We have every confidence in the world that criminals will continue to get what they justly deserve as long as they insist on showing their ignorance by waltzing  in front of a camera to carry out their crime.