There's already more than 450 police surveillance cameras in Baltimore. Add hundreds more from private companies, some of which link in to the police Citiwatch Center, and you're pretty much under watch just about anywhere.

Now you can't even escape to the corner bar.

At least if Shirley's Honey Hole on East Oliver Street is where you go.

City lawyers and cops crafted a unique plea deal for the bar owner to avoid getting padlocked under the city's newly enforced nuisance law -- she closes for the month of October, hires a security guard and installs a camera that gives city cops a live video feed. Plenty of businesses have surveillance cameras, but this one is inside, hooked up to the government.

That's a key difference and it's perfectly legal because the owner consented. But a  key question, I think, is how much consent did the owner Shirley Barner really give if she accepted the terms as part of a plea deal to save her business? And what's stopping the city from making cameras-linked-to cops a part of other plea deals with other problem bars? And why stop there. Make it a condition for a liquor license, or zoning improvements, or just about anything else?

If the corner bar is no longer a sanctuary, what is?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this new city campaign holding bar owners responsible, even outside their front doors. Some bars attract customers who don't deal drugs, who don't scream as they walk home at 2 in the morning, who don't overturn flower pots for the fun it, who don't attract police cars every night. Bar owners know who the troublemakers are and they could take a stand on behalf of their neighbors to tell patrons who disrupt the surroundings by yelling or urinating on peoples' front steps that they're barred from the establishment until their behavior changes.

Just be good neighbors.

I understand that in many parts of this city, where drug dealers run the streets, it's difficult if not impossible for owners to stop the violence, and we don't them to be cops. Even calling 911 can risk death. But try to be responsible and as Eastern District Police Maj. Melvin Russell explained on Tuesday at the Honey Hole hearing, "help us to get the bad guys out."

It will be interesting in March when attorney Peter A. Prevas challenges the constitutionality of the padlock law in Maryland's second highest court, the Court of Special Appeals. He represents the very first extablishment to be padlocked,  the Linden Lounge, which remained closed for months until its owner agreed to make security improvements and was allowed to reopen just before it's year-long ban ended.