CCTV cameras are a waste of money
AFTER YEARS of authorities installing surveillance cameras all over the UK, a report has revealed that they are useless at catching criminals.
Only one crime has been solved per year for every 1,000 CCTV cameras, coppers have admitted.
The problem is not so much the cameras themselves, as they sometimes do capture images of yobs committing crimes. But it turns out that, even after all the time and money spent on them, coppers don't bother to look at CCTV footage during their investigations.
The Daily Wail points out that a million cameras covering London have helped clear up barely 1,000 crimes.
Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said, "£500million has been spent by the Government on cameras. Despite this, in 2008 less than 1,000 crimes were solved using CCTV despite there being in excess of one million cameras in London."
He said that of the 269 robberies reported in one month only eight were solved with the help of CCTV footage.
The cameras are not even serving as a deterrent to crims either. Most of the time people assume that their antics will not be recorded because the system can't possibly be working.
Detectives can't be bothered going through hours of recorded footage "because it's hard work" and they have better things to do like shuffle paperwork.
Cameras have reduced vehicle theft and vandalism in car parks even though such offences can be 'displaced' by the presence of cameras to other areas that are not under CCTV surveillance.
Now the Tory party, which was same party that started the installation of CCTV cameras in the first place, claims that it is time that there was a major and long-overdue rethink on where the Home Office crime prevention budget is being spent.
Rather than admitting that the CCTV program was a huge white elephant when they installed it, the Tories now claim that it creates a huge intrusion on privacy yet provides little or no improvement in security.
In short the Tories have blamed the Labour party for carrying on with their own programme, whilst Labour politicians have carried on the programme because it was popular with middle England. Parish counsellors were often seen lobbying for CCTV coverage along with speed cameras and dog litter bins.
Simon Davies of Privacy International said the clamour for more and more CCTV cameras was based on the mistaken belief that they cut crime.
However for 15 years studies have consistently shown the cameras don't really work to reduce crime. Most British crimes are crimes of passion or alcohol-fuelled violence and disorder, Davies said.
No one seems to be blaming the police for not using the systems and one is left with the overwhelming feeling that if coppers could have been bothered to use the technology it might have worked.
True it would have led to Big Brother and all that, but it is wondrous strange that the UK's obsession with panopticon surveillance might thankfully fade away not because people are up in arms over the government spying on them, but because coppers are too lazy to use the technology. µ
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Well we knew they didn't cut crime (at best it relocated it, or made the criminals become aware of the CCTV in their area and adjust their crime habits), and now we're finding out that it's barely useful in solving crimes. What a waste of money. Of course we know that the government is planning to add face recognition technology to the cameras, and then create a massive database tracking our every move, especially if they can tax us some more.
Just like gun control, these drastic measures do nothing to protect law abiding citizens. They only provide another step in the direction of government control. I'm not paranoid -- just pointing out the obvious.
I do SO enjoy flipping the bird to each and every public intrusion camera I spot. It's just the knowledge that I might lend some excitement to the life of some useless government bureaucratic twit.
It's pretty easy to set up a camera to record 24/7, but searching through video, finding interesting data, etc. That requires sophisticated software if you want it to be any good, and sophisticated software requires well trained people.
My guess is that officers have insufficient training or the systems don't have powerful enough search capabilities.
Many systems require you to know the time of the crime. If that's the case, it's no wonder police can't be bothered to watch hours, even days, of video while the case gets colder.
Who would have know ATM has camera? Homies must roam when camera in Home. Those spots where crime continues have been crime ridden thruout & await survielance.
4 cameras & two year hard drive with wii is about$400. pest whom come out of trunk of cop car & raid apt complex with ho do goober for brain, often JV stunt, just quit. Ruin your own children or get cameras.
cameras work best on corner of building where two seperate angles can be viewed. accomplishes can be spotted. software to link every crime reports time date & location to nearest camera is must. viewing HD camera & on largescreen. YES.
Criminal have cameras too, yet of less import. main problem is authoriiyunder law to keep machines running.
Drashek
WTF?
You know what you brits should do? All the men in London should go outside, stand in groups around the cameras and HAVE A CITY WIDE CIRCLE JERK!
Take a look through any company selling CCTV cameras and most are low quality 300lines toys.
That's barely higher than VHS's 250 and much less than S-VHS 400 or PALs 700Lines quality.
No wonder you can't make out any face more than 5 feet away from the lens.
Why don't they bring out a HD-Camera with around 1200Lines. Then maybe they'd catch a decent image.
@Stuart
Yeah, that's part of the solution. Rather than spend money apparently saturating the area, why not put less cams but of higher (useable) quality in the highest crime areas??
The problem isn't the technology, it's numbnuts not knowing how to use it or having it be of high enough quality to do something with it (recognize a face, search hours, etc). Human failure.
The police are right not to use the footage, what use is it to see a fuzzy blob (presumably the criminal) stealing another fuzzy blob (presumably a car)? Useless.
What about those cameras with speakers and guns in them like in Metal Gear Solid? They work, don't they?
Ok so their arguement is they don't solve crimes because they are too busy to look at them which is based on the claim they don't have time to look through hours of footage. That arguement would only work with petty crime where you don't know when exactly it happen.
Things such as armed robbery, murder, etc.. you know the stuff that is generally caught on CCTV cameras other then shoplifters, you generally have a fairly defined window of when the crime happened. Add to that the fact that most CCTV camera systems use digital recorders which can jump to any time of day in a matter or seconds plus like the average DVD player can fast forward quick enough that you can review an entire hour of footage in about 5 minutes or less and that claim completely falls apart. With that claim now proven to be worthless it kinda ruins their arguement doesn't it?
Now then some have pointed out the quality on most CCTV cameras has been fairly poor. This is true but changing. The reasons cameras have been such poor quality in the past is in part due to people using poor quality parts in order to reduce prices but with the advent of cheap high resolution CCD and CMOS image processors this is no longer an issue. The other reason was in the past people were trying to record from atleast 4 cameras for a period of 24 hours or more to either tape or a small hard drive but with the ever decreasing cost larger hard drives along with better quality to compression ratios for digital video this is no longer an issue. Proof of point a lot of CCTV systems have switched to using mpeg-4 encoding which with a 1TB drive could record 16 cameras for atleast 20 hours at 720p resolution and DVD level image quality.
"Now then some have pointed out the quality on most CCTV cameras has been fairly poor."
Rubbish we've all seen CIS, they can take a picture that's a fuzzy blob and pull a fully detailed image out by pressing the "enhance" button.
Oops forgot, thats fiction isn't it, but I am sure the bobbies could use a feature like that, take a fuzzy CCTV image, feed in a known crims face and enhance the CCTV to fit, I am sure that would have them drooling to use the technology, they could bang up whichever criminaly inclined photographer they wanted!
The police know most of the crims operating in london, why not make real use of photoshop by chopping there faces onto unsolved crimes and get them banged up...everyone is happy...except the crim but who cares about them..
Take Norwich for example. It has one of the most dangerous nite-time areas (the Prince of Wales road) in the country. They have masses of CCTV and around 20 Police officers on hand on a Fri/Sat night. Yet still people are being murdered and seriously assaulted with alarming regularity. CCTV doesnt stop drunks!
We the local resident have been asking for more consideration and 'protection' but when asked, the Police replied that they didnt want to patrol the streets off the PoW road as nothing would be happening. I pointed out that was the result of proactive policing and exactly the result we the residents wanted i.e. nothing happening. The Police didnt want to know. Unless we had murder and anarchy they wouldnt help. Well why would they, we are after all only council tax payers.
I guess they have to fill their Whitehall arrest targets somehow. So essentially the Police are useless as well as CCTV for crime prevention.
The whole crime prevention setup in the UK is a scam.
There is a very good reason why the 'usual suspects' do not get banged away for long stretches.
Its a known fact that a large % of crime is committed by a small known minority.
Now the Police could lock that group away for a long time but what would happen? Crime would plummet. But thats bad for the Police as their budgets would be cut and police officers would be made redundant. They cant have that.
So what do they do? They just arrest the usual suspects, charge them or caution them with the bare minimum to get them back on the streets, put a tick on their performance sheet for the month. They then rinse and repeat month after month so they keep their targets up. The Police due to targets, have zero incentive to actually reduce crime.
Thats why you see 20 year olds on the streets with 35+ previous convictions.
Great isnt it!
Totally agree with above comments,unless your an innocent motorist, your unlikely to see a copper when you need one.
Blame Gordon Brown,it was he that spent OUR taxes on lazy coppers whose only job experience is pushing pens.
Let's face it,how often do(or could)you see one chasing & apprehending real criminals?
It was Gordo Brown that inflated the salaries of doctors,nurses,teachers,coppers & last but not least, Politicians, with taxpayers money, WITHOUT any of them having to do what has to be done in the private sector, that is EARN any increases & we shall pay the price for decades to come.
It was Gordon Brown, who refuses to abandon the ID card,NHS database & many other criminally expensive projects, that do precisely NOTHING..he's a wasted space.
We need coppers boots, on the footpaths of our estates, not in the back of chipshops, many are overweight & unfit, they would be hard pressed to chase a tortoise.
for another 500 mil I could arm all of your cameras with video analytics and airsoft/paintball guns. This would eliminate the need to search the tapes, you just go around rounding up people with paint or welts on them. It would work well as a deterrent also. However your economy might crash a little with nobody out on the streets or in the shops.
Perhaps they are effective, but because criminals know where they are they don't commit crimes in front of them.
It's a bit like saying a vaccine for measles is a waste of money because no cases of measles have been detected.