The City of Houston is cracking down on convenience store crime by forcing the store owners to beef up security.

A new ordinance adopted Wednesday requires every convenience store in the city to have color, digital surveillance cameras. They have 18 months to comply.

The videos come in handy when there's a holdup. But sometimes the quality is so poor - you can tell what's happening, but not who is doing it. The city hopes once criminals know all the cameras are taking good, sharp images -- they'll be reluctant to commit a crime in the first place.

Zaf Tahir owns two convenience stores. He helped come up with rules that will soon apply to every one in the city of Houston.

"So there are small things you can do. It's not rocket science," Tahir said. "We are recording everything in the store."

"I'm not going to tell you that we're going to solve all crime everywhere, but it's a series of steps where we focus on prevention," Mayor Bill White said.

Here are some of the other new convenience store rules passed by city council:

• Owners must provide annual safety training to all employees
• Stores must post “no trespassing” and “no loitering” signs on the property, which would allow police to remove vagrant people from parking lots and corners
•Post height strips at exits, which help employees accurately describe suspects after a hold-up
•Install silent panic and holdup alarms
•Install a drop safe, which prevents easy access to large amounts of cash

"So once the money is dropped, they don't have access to the money," Tahir said.

Failure to comply with the new rules is a class C misdemeanor, which would lead to a $500 fine. They take effect in one month.

There was some debate today about whether this adds yet another level of bureaucracy for small businesses. After all, it's the mom and pop stores that probably have the worst security and have to spend the most to improve it. The mayor says better security would be good for business.

So by making your convenience store less attractive to criminals, the city is hoping the criminals do their shopping somewhere else.