London’s inner-city Borough of Islington is an area of significant social contrasts. Boasting a population of almost 200,000 residents, it features one of the largest areas of urban Georgian architecture on top of a varied mix of retail outlets, restaurants, trendy bars and clubs.
The Borough encompasses two Westminster Parliamentary constituencies – Finsbury as well as Islington – and has been home to many famous residents both past and present, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the actress Neve Campbell and writers Douglas Adams, Nick Hornby and the celebrated author of 1984 and Animal Farm, George Orwell.
This progressive area of London continues to enjoy firm community links which have helped fuel a resurgence in business and building development of late, most notably in the form of the new Emirates Stadium (home to Arsenal Football Club).
A key element of that resurgence has been a concentrated effort from the Council to secure the Borough and protect its residents via an increased police presence – backed by a comprehensive, Borough-wide CCTV system.
The new Islington surveillance system was planned as an expansion of the existing Kings Cross scheme that entered service back in 1979, but that system had subsequently reached its maximum capacity and has since been eclipsed by the rapid developments in modern CCTV technology.
Islington’s Control Room
The new GB pound 650,000 CCTV Control Room facility built for Islington features an impressive monitor wall with over 160 square feet of video display area. It includes 48 CRT monitors, three back projection screens and eight TFT displays.
Specified by systems designer Cognetix and installed by main contractor Tyco Fire & Integrated Solutions (Traffic and Transportation) to address the unique issues faced within the Borough of Islington, the set-up has been designed to address a Government campaign aimed at cutting crime in the Borough and removing drug dealers.
No less than 17 km of fibre optic backbone cable link over 120 cameras, all of which feed information to the Control Room and provide visual coverage of the Borough of Islington from Kings Cross right through to Finsbury Park and Archway. The Command and Control Room operators thus enjoy an unparalleled view of all activity across the Borough.
Given that Cognetix has placed each camera in a pre-qualified, audited location, each unit effectively gathers the maximum amount of information possible from its specific scene of coverage. This economical camera placement in tandem with the employment of experienced, Security Industry Authority-licensed Control Room operators defines an efficient audit trail from the very start of the evidential process. That trail was particularly important when specifying both the control and recording aspects of the system – an issue Cognetix addressed by specifying a solution designed by Synectics.
In the Control Room, Islington’s CCTV managers have joined many other London Boroughs – including Camden and The City – in choosing to deploy the SynergyPro control system. Using over six positions, the system’s intuitive operator interface furnishes each user with a fast route to all common system functions. In addition, supervisors now have the ability to monitor system usage and override its operation if and when necessary.
Making control effective
One of the more commonly used functions of SynergyPro is its ‘incident’ (or ‘in progress’) capability. This is used by Islington’s CCTV operators during the course of tracking ‘live’ events on screen to create a fully-documented audit trail of the incident. The ‘incident’ feature also locks out other operators from using a specific ‘live’ camera during the crucial incident tracking period.
That point is of particularly important operational value to Islington’s staff, as their system is connected to several other London Boroughs via the TVNP network – allowing operators to access cameras across other areas of the city and, in turn, other systems operators to look at Islington’s camera images.
With any other potential user from another Borough system ‘locked out’, operators can be confident of uninterrupted ‘live’ incident tracking. During this time, the date – along with the start and finish time for each event – is stored automatically within the evidential video created and tagged with a full audit trail of information indexed to the operator’s initials. Using this facility, the Islington team can be confident that, when tracking an event, their actions are recorded and documented for reference (if required for evidential purposes).
‘Prioritised supervisor access’ allows the tracking of a particular event to be scrutinised. This reveals which cameras were used to view an incident, how and when they were ‘moved’, the sequence of camera switching and which Control Room operator was in charge of them at the time. In practice, this has proven to be a powerful resource, particularly in the event that a prosecution arises from a tracked incident. A watertight audit trail means that when digital evidence is passed on to the police service for subsequent submission in Court, all parties involved can be confident in the authenticity of the prosecution evidence supplied.
Any incident requiring additional support can be assisted by the Control Room’s ability to route ‘live’ camera video via the ‘Follow Me’ feature of SynergyPro directly to Bow Police Control. Operators are able to feed ‘live’ events directly to the remote monitor, affording police controllers the ability to follow and trace a situation as it develops. This enables them to assess what’s happening, and then commit the correct level of response for any incident.
Professional police assessment can be in ‘virtual’ attendance at any relayed incident via the video wall. The resultant, effective police deployment at each of these incidents has proven to be an invaluable asset when it comes to protecting the community of Islington.
Using the key cameras
The number of cameras controlled in the Borough means that operators in the Islington Control Room devote their time to manually controlling key cameras based on their specialist knowledge of the area.
To ensure that cameras don’t remain static for long periods of time, the system employs PTZ camera tours. Intuitively programmed through the SynergyPro control software, these tours are split into three variants:
– day tours (concentrating on road intersections and the main shopping areas);
– rush hour tours (that survey public transport ‘bottlenecks’ such as those occurring at bus and London Underground stations);
– night-time tours (which keep a watchful eye over pubs, clubs and cash machines, etc).
George Heath – Islington’s CCTV Control Room manager – explains the tour system. “These pre-set tours reinforce the presence of the system. Residents and potential offenders can see the cameras moving. This maximises their effectiveness as a deterrent to criminal activity, while at the same time ensuring that all of our cameras gather the maximum amount of useable visual information possible.”
Accompanying the CCTV control system is a Time Lapse Later (TLL) digital recording solution. In explaining Islington’s decision to ‘go digital’, Heath comments: “With our old analogue recording system in the Kings Cross Control Room, we would experience drawbacks almost on a daily basis. First there were the usual tape management issues. Having to ensure that each tape was changed at regular intervals would absorb a great deal of my operators’ time during the working day.”
Heath continues: “Second, if an incident were to be captured on the system, we would be forced to wait for the inserted video cassette to finish recording before we could retrieve it from the recorder and pass the footage on for police review. The TLL system is a natural partner to our Control Room solution and, by using it, we are now able to instantly review any captured footage and immediately equip the police with the essential evidence they need for an effective prosecution.”
Automatic, intelligent redistribution
Heath and his team’s use of the TLL solution allows the automatic intelligent redistribution of the digital storage capacity and affords any of the system’s selected cameras to be recorded in real-time.
Automatically recording whichever camera(s) the operator is using, it enables highly detailed broadcast quality images to be captured at the very start of the recording process (in other words, when it’s liable to contain the most ‘evidential value’). Only later, after a three-day period, is time-lapsing introduced – to reduce the frame rate of the stored evidence down to eight frames per second for four days, then down to one frame per second for the remaining 30 days (correspondingly reducing the digital storage capacity required for its retention).
In addition, unlike the situation pertaining with standard digital recording systems, Islington’s TLL recordings employ very high pixel count images. These are measured in Common Interchange Format (CIF). Typically 4CIF, the recordings are four times more detailed (by pixel count) than those commonly offered, thus permitting more detailed recognition. Of course, this is a crucial factor when it comes to the presentation of key evidential information in Courts of Law.
The London Borough of Islington’s vast camera network creates a huge amount of visual information to process and, potentially, retain for further investigation. Catering for this, Islington’s experienced CCTV operators make good use of SynergyPro’s Evidence Locker management feature. A robust server configured to handle and store video evidence, the Evidence Locker provides a hugely useful resource, while acting as a central point for evidence management.
For a full management audit trail, all usage is logged onto a database. Taking account of future authentication purposes, a unique 128-bit MD5 hashing encryption code is created with every minute of video footage. If a copy of any footage is required to be taken off-site by, for example, police officers, the system saves the video clip and an evidence hashing code – logged and detailed in the form of a Digital Evidence Certificate – to prove its legitimacy.
Dealing with different challenges
Forming a direct link between the public and the Islington Control Room is a Help Point located in the Nags Head area. This specially-designed kiosk affords members of the public a direct link to Control Room operators 24/7. Use of the Help Point triggers two of the system’s PTZ cameras to be targeted on the kiosk, allowing the Control Room operators to make a full assessment of the situation and summon help from the police if necessary.
“As Control Room operators, we deal with many different challenges on a daily basis,” comments one of the team members. “One minute we can be monitoring an unlicensed street trader, the next we might be directing police response cars to a serious incident.”
George Heath continues the theme. “Our experienced CCTV operators also assist with football matches at the newly-completed Emirates Stadium. On match days, we’re in close contact with the police. Our cameras will be used to monitor footfall of crowds to and from the ground. In the short time the system has been ‘live’, we have used the encrypted video evidence to support a variety of different convictions. These have been as diverse as confidence tricksters defrauding passers-by of cash through to a foiled kidnap attempt.”
According to Heath, the comprehensive new camera network has had a very warm response from the public, with a good many residents suggesting they now feel much safer when going about their daily business. The most recent statistics note a dramatic fall in common types of street crime since the system was introduced. Encouraging results for the hard-working CCTV team, and proof that the monetary investment was a good decision.
Heath adds: “In my experience, the benefits of the displacement of crime through an effective CCTV system are felt right across the community. A lower level of street crime results in the area becoming a more pleasant place in which residents and visitors alike can spend their time. That will ultimately lead to an influx of new business to the area, and the inevitable increase in demand for residences.”
The evidential value of good quality surveillance footage together with a watertight audit trail also benefits the community greatly. The production of evidential quality footage of incidents means that many prosecutions don’t go to trial, leading to the accused entering a guilty plea when they’re told that evidential quality video footage exists. This results in officers not having to spend long periods of time in Court as part of the prosecution’s case against offenders.
Instead, they spend more time where they can make a real difference – on the streets, fighting crime and disorder and protecting the public. Isn’t that the solution we all want?