Time to switch the CCTV cameras off?

[Gromit]

Only one crime is solved a year for every 1,000 CCTV cameras, police admitted yesterday.

The startling figure comes in a Scotland Yard report which warns that a network that can capture individuals as many as 300 times a day is failing to improve public safety.

Officers found that the million cameras covering London have helped clear up barely 1,000 crimes.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-120870 0/CCTV-helps-solve-just-ONE-crime-1-000-office rs-fail-use-film-evidence.html

Costly waste of time or a useful deterrent?

[buildersmate]

I recommend that you also start a campaign for the removal of cats-eyes, on the grounds that they don't do enough to prevent road accidents.

[jake-the-peg]

I was in the South of France this month and in the supermarket near me there was a guard in combat fatigues with a huge dog.

The petrol pump had a barrier and wouldn't serve motorcyclists until they handed over their keys.

It seemed OTT to me but when I asked one of my French friends she pointed out that they don't use cameras so if someone legs it with petrol or goods they have little chance of recovering them or even prosecuting.

Cameras act as a deterrant - not perfect but they help.

Guard dogs or cameras? - I know what I'd choose

[R1Geezer]

Well Gromit, you surpise me, quoting the Daily Mail, heaven forfend!

I suspect that many more crimes are prosecuted using CCTV evidence. They may not be the primary detection method but I reckon a lot more than 1 in 1000 have some sort of CCTV evidence.

[jake-the-peg]

Of course it rather depend on how you phrase it.

With over a million cameras in London and 4.2 million nationally that is thousands of crimes that would otherwise be unsolved.

The Met also estimate that CCTV evidence is important in 70% of murder investigations.

Personally I can't see how removing CCTV cameras would result in a drop in crime

[Gromit]

Jake,

Would removing CCTV cameras result in a increase in crime?

Would it result in a decrease in prosecutions?

[jake-the-peg]

I think so in both cases.

Stop stores having security cameras and you'll have a massive increase in shop lifting.

I don't know how you'll bring cases against drivers who fill up and drive off without paying

You'll also not have much success in bringing prosecutions in civil disorder cases in town centres.

And you'll just have to take the police's word for it when they shoot Brazillian electricians who wear big puffer jackets and jump over the railway turnstiles

Or don't

[brionon]

As for Policemen ! How dare they look at me? I'm commiting no crime.

[jno]

it's all part of the great move towards sacking people and doing their jobs with machines, isn't it? These days I'm invited to check myself out and pay at Tescos without the need for staff to take my money at all. Within five years this will quite likely be the only option.

Same with computers for the lasses with calculators in the accounts department, CTVs for policemen, and those fancy little robots that paint cars like Picasso.

Some of it is worth it - cars built by robots these days last an awful lot longer than 50 years ago, when you expected to break down every month and probably to fix it yourself.

As for CCTV: nobody seems to mind, on the basis that we are awash with the crime (the Mail tells us so) and therefore need to do what it takes to catch the perpetrators. Why aren't they working? Mechanical defects, or just not enough cops to search through the footage - but to rectify that would mean hiring more people, and that's against the spirit of the age.

[ludwig]

Computers for the lasses? - no need to be sexist.

[youngmafbog]

I wouldnt like to see a drop in cameras, like Jake I reckon crime would increase in some cases.

Although not too keen on the thug with a dog I would like to see more PolicePeople (for the benefit of Ms Harperson) on the streets and i mean real ones not noo labour plastic ones.

Its all about happy mediums

[jake-the-peg]

Careful YMB support for the cameras puts you dangerously to the left of the raving right.

David Davies will be taking names ;c)

[jno]

always used to be lasses in accounts, back in the days when jobs were de facto segregated, ludwig. They had big, hand-cranked desk calculating machines. Of course now that it's all mighty testosterone-fuelled whizbang computers, it's much more a male preserve. Don't blame, me, though, I'm just telling it like it was.

[what..the?]

Without the CCTV the tv channels would have no material for their 'caught on camera' shows where would we be!Shouldn't we be charging them for sourcing clips, mind you it would only be pennies compared to the overall running costs.

We should find away to increase revenue earnings on these cameras, can't we allow access and charge RAC, the AA or other services like security companies who would find the info valuable?

Surely if they are this unsucessful it's because the evidence is often inconclusive due to poor image quality unfortunatley it would mean more investment in new technology, but the moneys not there.

We all need tamper proof microchips implanted and be traced 24 hrs a day, crime rates would reduce, along with swingers parties and affairs and gay bars and adult shops would go 'bust'! Shame really!

[Singer57]

Give ALL of our police proper training on firearms and let them carry guns. That may then make the thugs think twice when they are about to mug someone if they know the cop coming round the corner may just 'bust a cap in their goddamn ass' too!

[richardmurrayy]

Look everything has their own two things to decide first dark part and second is their light part. if 1000 CCTV are help police to solve 1 case, its helping dude. Its all about how you admire things, check this out http://www.ionu.co.uk