CCTV has taken another bashing in the national media this Bank Holiday weekend with the suggestion from a leading police official that only 3% of street robberies committed in London have led to a conviction because of captured surveillance images.
According to The Guardian, detective chief inspector Mike Neville (head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office at New Scotland Yard) told the Security Document World Conference that this situation is little short of an “utter fiasco”, going on to suggest that: “Billions of pounds have been spent on CCTV kit, but no thought has gone into how the police service is going to use the images, and how those same images are utilised in the Courts.”
Neville has been scathing in his remarks. As far as he’s concerned, the presence of a camera at the scene doesn’t act as a deterrent because criminals will assume it isn’t working. When footage is recorded, Neville feels that CCTV operators “don’t want to sit and look through the images because it’s hard work”. In addition, he stated that, on occasion, the police service doesn’t bother enquiring beyond local Councils to ascertain whether or not CCTV cameras monitored a given street incident.
Neville’s comments follow hot-on-the-heels of last month’s admittance by Graeme Gerrard (lead spokesperson on CCTV for the Association of Chief Police Officers) that CCTV is doing little to prevent late-night violence in town centres across the UK in spite of the fact that 4.2 million cameras have been installed. Gerrard told a Parliamentary Committee that the public has been “misled” into believing that camera installation would have a big impact on anti-social behaviour.
More constructive relationship
For his part, Neville has also been critical of the amount of training received by police officers when it comes to the handling and use of visual evidence, and stated that there must be “a more constructive relationship” between them and CCTV operators.
Neville is a firm believer that those same operators require more feedback to ensure they feel valued. “CCTV operators really do need feedback,” he explained. “If they are called upon on a regular basis then they feel wanted and are more helpful as a result. We want to develop a career path for CCTV [police] inquirers.”
Hold on a minute, though. For Neville to suggest that little thought has gone into how CCTV images will be used in Court is a tad inaccurate. The security industry has gone a long way towards addressing this issue by working on the publication of BS 8495. As long as users of CCTV systems comply with this standard then images should carry sufficient weight in a Court of Law.
Let’s not be too hung up on this 3% figure, either. There’s a plethora of examples to suggest that surveillance technology not only prevents crime, but also plays a significant part in detecting it. Look at the 7/7 bombings… Then there was the Jamie Bulger case. Oh yes, and the Securitas Cash Depot robbery, too.
It’s fair to say there remains a clearly defined requirement for a more cohesive approach to CCTV (and its application) on the part of Stakeholders, but to suggest that “the CCTV boom has failed to slash crime” (as have The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the BBC) is a sweeping generalisation and doesn’t hold water.
As John Dwyer (former assistant chief constable of Cheshire Police) told BBC Radio 5 Live recently, cameras do present a deterrent effect “provided it is demonstrably evidenced that the police service is indeed taking action based on the footage gained”.
It would appear the faults here lie not with the technology and the security industry per se but with the Courts and end users of CCTV systems. The Courts must install the right technology to deal with the ‘new breed’ of digital video evidence, while end users have to become well enough acquainted with BS 8495 that no mistakes are made when transferring images to removable media.
Not all doom and gloom
On the positive side, the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (otherwise known as Viido) is launching a series of initiatives in a bit to boost conviction rates from CCTV evidence:
*a new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders;
*posting images of suspects allegedly involved in muggings, rape and robbery cases on the Internet from next month;
*building a National CCTV Database to incorporate pictures of convicted offenders (as well as unidentified suspects)… plans here have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is duly refined.
Neville’s unit is now investigating whether or not it can use software first developed to track advertising during televised Premiership games to follow distinctive brand logos on the clothing of unidentified suspects. “Adding pictures of suspects to the Internet via the Met Police web site would mean that criminals would see CCTV work, and that means they’ll be less likely to commit crime.”
Word has it that we are some way off from a National Database of suspects’ images. There’s a plethora of technical and ethical issues still to be overcome, after all. However, as long as the Information Commissioner’s Office and others of a similar ilk can be convinced, this has to be the way forward.
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