Birmingham’s West Midlands Police has been forced to spend GB pound 300,000 removing and destroying CCTV cameras after a doomed operation to monitor traffic coming in and out of certain parts of the city.
Project Champion was funded by a Government anti-terrorism grant and saw over 200 cameras put up in predominantly Muslim areas of the city without any public consultation. This led to accusations of discrimination and that West Midlands Police was ‘spying’ on Muslims.
The full cost of removing the cameras and redeploying them is now being estimated at over GB pound 300,000, with 64 cameras being destroyed because it was not “economically or technically viable” to redeploy them.
53 cameras were sold to other forces for around GB pound 1 each and 63 retained in the Midlands to fight organised crime.
In the wake of what has surely got to be described as one of the most bungling CCTV deployments in history, we’ve compiled a list of three more rubbish CCTV deployments:
Invasion of the shadowmen
These jewellery thieves must have carefully scoped their target out with an experienced CCTV installer who would have told them that burgling this particular jewellery store would be safe from any prying eyes.
The cameras were so badly set up that you can’t make out even the most vague details of the burglars.
Click the picture to watch the full video, and apologies for the dodgy commentary from former Top Gear presenter Quentin Wilson.
Pune bomber escapes as cameras are switched off
The Indian city of Pune was the victim of a series of four explosions earlier this year, and in the wake of bombings in the city in previous years had a large number of CCTV cameras positioned strategically across the city.
Depending on which news source you read the cameras were either broken or switched off – but it’s not in dispute that they were non-functional in the lead-up to the bombings on 1 August 2012.
This is surely one of the most significant CCTV failures in a terrorist incident, and in many ways underlines the importance of the technology on a city-wide scale.
A camera with an axe to grind
This one isn’t so much a bad CCTV installation, but perhaps one that didn’t properly add up the potential risks. Then again, who could have bargained on the determined criminals owning an angle grinder?
Certainly not Greater Manchester Police whose officers were monitoring cameras in the Swinton area of Salford when one camera began to violently shake. Looking down from the dome camera, operators were shocked to see two vandals taking an angle grinder to the camera.
Clearly, this shows both the strengths of CCTV deployment (putting fear into criminals) and the remaining weaknesses (cameras cannot fight back).
Click on the picture to watch the full video of this poor dome camera witnessing its own demise.
The installation of cameras on the street, is not easily acceptable by the citizen.The first sensation indeed usually rejected because we can be spied or controlled. It is very important that from the studies are made public statements about the need to install cameras in certain locations or areas of the city. But more importantly information campaigns with claims deadlines. By harmonizing get the necessary consensus between security and privacy that we all want to keep. The most unfortunate of these cases is the “joyful use” of public money that our politicians do, making investments that later prove incompatible with… Read more »
@Patricio where is that picture? Looks like a seriously muddled array of signs and technology!
Rob, this is a rare example of what I said in the previous post. This image is a central area of Madrid, about two years ago, and it was very conflicted about prostitution and drugs. The city council design a plan to retrieve it, and one of the main areas of action was the identification of traffickers, clients and prostitutes. The plan was discussed with the neighbors, who lived at the situation, it welcomed. After two years, the area has been converted, it only remains some residual prostitution, and one of the best signs is that the premises were empty… Read more »
Patricio – what a great story of the postive impact of video surveillance. I suspect this might make the comments of the week section of our weekly security briefing! Thanks for sharing.