It's an opportunistic solution to a budget problem.
Local governments have extra money from property price bubble increasing tax revenues.
At the same time there are great open source image analysis models for companies to put on a pole using cheap android hw and a solar panel and make bold claims about solving all crime, then they can sell that data again to 3rd parties like insurance. Also can start buying access to more video feeds from ring cameras etc and resell that. They'll hire someone to make a ux to integrate it into PDs later, for a premium of course.
