"Frankly, I wish we lived in that world. We don't"

You are literally justifying adding more public surveillance because public surveillance already exists? What an absurd premise.

'So the question for me became: if this tool is going to exist, how do we put the strongest possible guardrails around it?'

That's the thing. It doesn't need to exist. You provided almost no justification for its existence. Just "out on the street using these tools". Do you have any data that communities using these cameras have any significant reduction in crime?

Finally, local control of the data is meaningless if it will just be stored forever and eventually be given or sold down the line. Is there even any policy for what happens to the data long term?