“CCTV cameras failing to cut crime.” says police chief.
Despite spending billions of pounds, and introducing one camera for every 14 people, the British Government’s love affair with CCTV has not translated into a reduction in crime, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, head of the Scotland Yard department in charge of them. Speaking at the Security Document World Conference in London, yesterday, Neville described the system as “an utter fiasco” that had not only helped solve less than 3% of crimes but also has failed comprehensively as a deterrent.
“There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working,” he stated, urging that officers need to be properly trained in surveillance, and that some some avoid using CCTV because “it’s hard work”.
“CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” Neville told the Guardian newspaper, “but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court.”
DCI Neville’s unit has developed a database of CCTV images which will be used to identify and track offenders. The team also has plans to release images of suspects on the internet.
I would believe that given the number of cameras in use, this equates to information overload. You’d have to have an enormous cache of employees watching these camera monitors constantly with meticulous care to observation and an keen ability to ascertain and ‘compute’ specific movements of every single individual floating in front of the camera.
I keep two monitors and four cameras going all day: three views on FuzzyButt (two stories above me), and one on the front door primarily to watch the birds but it allows me to also see who may come to the door or any packages left there as well since I’m at the back of the house and a full story down. While activity does sometimes move quite close and clear, a lot of the time images have to really be viewed more closely to see what’s going on.
I would imagine that anyone considering would-be-negative activity probably count on this kind of overload, distraction, and reduced camera credibility.
I stand corrected David, that is a flip side. I would think that if something occurred in an area of concern to ME, I’d be asking. IF, however, they are trying to identify specific individuals who have committed acts somewhere else but may just be transient in other camera views, then culprits might be located IF the equipment could actually identify them well enough to track their movements. I don’t see how our current technology could adequately do this though.
Mind you, you could always request the footage yourself under the FOI act, that could be fun.
Activist comedian Mark Thomas once stood in the field of view of CCTV cameras operated by Newham Council, surrounded by a troop of Morris dancers who were going through their routine in full costume, and holding a sign with his name on, then asked the council for the footage under the UK’s Data Protection Act, giving the time, place and circumstances. They were unable to identify the footage in question.
My wife was once wrongly accused of shoplifting (she had something in her bag that they happened to sell in a shop she was in). She told them to check their security footage as there was a camera pointing right at the stand where those products were - and they just looked at her like she was an idiot and said there was no actual footage...
That’s a shame, they’ll never be able to show that your wife didn’t have a nasty fall on items that slipped from a badly stacked shelf necessitating several thousands of pounds of compensation then, will they?
Well, give them a few years and Facial Recognition will advance to the point they can set it up so the devices scan and track people, so if needed, the police can say ‘who was at the crime area at the time?’, then go and *track* where those people went afterwards, and review the footage from those tapes.
In other words, less a ‘We are watching you as you commit the crime’ as ‘you will be identified’.
Well, give them a few years and Facial Recognition will advance to the point they can set it up so the devices scan and track people, so if needed, the police can say ‘who was at the crime area at the time?’, then go and *track* where those people went afterwards, and review the footage from those tapes.
In other words, less a ‘We are watchign oyu as you commit the crime’ as ‘you will be identified’.
Except that most of the people who commit crime these days seem to wear hoodies so the facial recognition is RIGHT out the window.
They won’t rely on facial identification anyway, nor retna scans. Everyone will get a bar code at birth tattooed in easily scanned metal no matter what you’re wearing (or not wearing).
