The Police frontman Sting once sang he’d watch every move you made.

And though the dark song about an obsessive lover has little relevance to Chicago industries, segueing to information about the Chicago police potentially having to enforce business owners to watch patrons via video surveillance seems only a tad like a stretch.

But it would be a greater stretch to agree with Mayor Daley’s radical proposal to require all businesses open for more than 12 hours to install security cameras.

Last week, Daley cited a need to reduce crime and increase a feeling of safety as two of the reasons to require the estimated 12,000 city establishments to get digital.

What Daley failed to realize is requiring small businesses to install cameras is not going to lessen crime, it’s just going to shorten the work day.

Why wouldn’t a shop trim a couple hours off each day and save the cost of surveillance equipment? The businesses also won’t have to pay employees for those few extra hours.

Businesses save some money on payroll and facility upgrades and Daley gets fewer late-night establishments fostering crime. Everyone wins, right? Wrong.

Nothing screams, “I care about my city’s workforce,” like suggesting a measure that many experts, such as Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper, predict will eliminate a number of jobs and shrink wages.

Roper told the Chicago Sun-Times he believes many businesses will stay open for a few hours less which will give hourly employees less money.

But as Daley pointed out, “The terrorist attacks in London were solved by cameras.”

True. But not cameras that thinned the pocketbooks of so many of the city’s employees.