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One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras
SpuriousLogic writes "Only one crime was solved for each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: 'It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.' He added: 'CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security. The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV.'"
Sure, but how many crimes did it prevent? I always considered cameras more of a prevention, i.e. only idiots commit crimes in front of cameras.
Obviously, another question is how many crimes simply moved to areas without cameras.
It's not about solving crimes and those of us that aren't complete sheep know it. It's about getting people use to an intrusive government presence and getting them to accept it with minimum complaint. For that it's been very effective.
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i would really hate to have my privacy intruded upon while walking around in public ;p
of course it is a waste of funds, all the money spent on those camera would probably pay for an extra dozen police cars or hire several more police officers to patrol the higher crime infested areas...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's all about intimidating law-abiding citizens.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Thats some dangerous thinking there SpuriousLogic. I think someone wants to visit the Ministry of Love.
The current ones suffer from being blurry, so ID can not be made. If they upgraded to HD quality, then they could see the criminals' faces.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The Greater London Assembly is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to "predict" if a crime is about to take place and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.
Anyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. "Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence," said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. ("Consumer confidence" is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)
"Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object," said councillor Jason Fazackarley. "Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays."
The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible cliches copied from other papers.
However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: "++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
CCTV cameras are a one-time installation cost (with a minor amount of maintenance). Regular police forces are a continuous cost.
A million cameras capture 1 per 1000 = 1,000 criminals caught per year. The following years should catch an equivalent number - for little additional cost. This is one of the basic problems with news reporting - if the BBC had splashed a big story headlined "CCTV Cameras Catch 1,000 Per Year", there would be an entirely different public reaction.
"Sure, but how many crimes did it prevent?"
If I was somebody who was aware of the failure of the cameras in terms of identification I would simply stop caring they exist.
In EVERY situation there are cameras it is a excercise in futility.
For Example:
In highschool we would do various illegal activities in the back. They put up cameras. We got scared. After about a month we stopped caring and it was business as usual, but we got more sneaky and better at our activities. We even would stage large fights right in front of the cameras with absolutely no mediation.
Moral of the story is that nothing beats an on duty cop/teacher in person patrolling. All these cameras have done for London is made them the base for 1984 jokes for the past few years.
We need more cameras with better quality. HD quality with multiple lenses to also read in different spectrums such as infrared and ultraviolet and of course these should have sensitive shotgun microphones. If we deploy ten times the number of cameras that are currently out there we can stop these dirty crooks and rid he world of crime once and for all!
For the price and upkeep of 1,000 CCTV cameras I would expect that one could deploy at least one additional meat-based law inforcement unit complete with two eyes. This creature, that we'll call a 'police officer', might be expected to solve more than one crime per year.
Absolutely I would hate to see the limited government dollars allocated for police protection squandered on inefficient ways such as CCTV.
CCTV, like the US color coded terror alert level, the beefed up airport screening people and processes, and the very Dept. of Homeland Security itself are not primarily intended to be first-line effective deterrents. They are intended to be that, and do the job somewhat, but they are foremost intended to be seen by the populace as being devised and put into place by their government. The government has a mind set that the people need to be tranquilized -- that they are afraid and need to be comforted. I sat in on some of the committee meetings held at and for NIH, and the things suggested that were carried through were high visibility projects. Those things not visible were far less likely to be taken seriously, even though many would have been more effective (and were in other places at other times). There's also the inevitable politician's choice to be seen doing something positive, but still if it weren't visible, nobody thought it would carry much weight. I had a friend at Commerce and she said exactly the same sort of things went on in their meetings.
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Best. Post. Ever.
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"...of course these should have big-assed shotguns"
There, fixed that for you.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
One huge difference: cameras can't actually apprehend anybody. There are cases upon cases of crimes being commited directly under watch of a camera that are never solved. Whether it's because the perp is wearing a hat or they never return to the city or whatever, were there an actual officer there it could have been stopped then and there: the crime would be prevented AND the perp could be taking directly to gaol, no passing GO. A woman being assaulted and saying "oh, we got it on camera so we /might/ be able to catch the guy" isn't going to feel any better until he's actually caught. Telling her they can't catch him because he was wearing a hat or the camera was turned 5 degrees too far to the left is just pouring salt into the wound.
"I was raised by a cup of coffee" -Homsar
i would really hate to have my privacy intruded upon while walking around in public ;p
Solid point. However, there is a difference between:
- Your actions going unrecorded in public
- Your actions being recorded as a matter of chance (someone random taking your picture or accidentally including you in one)
- Your actions always being recorded.
Lets have your grandma walk down the street, get mugged, break her hip and be traumatized. How many CCTVs would you be willing to put up to reduce the chances of that ever happening again? This privacy thing is getting incompetent, when you're in the public.. you're in the public. Unless someone has CCTVs pointing into your house. Appreciate the fact that if someone knifed you in the street, you have a better chance of catching that person
I don't know how it operates over there, but here in the US this is what's called a request for more money.
The rate of alcohol consumption per capita in the UK is double that of the 50s. (sorry, was reading that the other day but I didn't bookmark it, some UK paper)Crime goes up the more drunks you have. Just human reality. Drunks don't care about *anything*, they lose the ability to think straight, cameras or no cameras. They'll act out aggressively without a second thought, or do other stupid stuff like pull street crime. Drunks or druggies, an easy wallet or purse grab plus a bit of sport making people hurt, they dig it.
That's not all the reasons for increased crime, but it is a big part of it.
Anyway, those cameras....this is my real point. Bull SHIT it was to reduce normal street crime, it is conditioning to get people there to accept full big brother action, and they have for the most part. One step at a time. First in public, now they are going to be putting them in "problem family homes". After that is accepted, they will expand the list so more fall under the "problem" category (like the US has that totally illegal and should have caused regime change by now big brother "no fly" list that all the cowering "flying public" herd animal peons accept, so it is no better there).
Once they have enough cameras installed under the "problem family" category, they'll go all the way to every place, every home, every business, every building and all over outside. And if you refuse, well there you go, you are now a "problem", you are a "resister" so they have a precedent to do it that YOU accepted before without revolt as long as it wasn't "all that bad".
If you wait until it "gets that bad", well gee, it IS that bad then and you blew your chance to stop it and now are stuck in some hideous north korean styled society, just with better tech, and you WON'T be able to revolt or stop things then. They already disarmed the population there, fed them that crap about "reducing crime". What a crock. Have to retreat inside your own home..and they get people to accept that insanity...I mean..damn
You change things before they "get that bad", or accept your shackles and keep your eyes lowered and mind your masters. There is NO middle ground there, and you won't be negotiating with your owners either, nor their armed bully boys.
ALL societies eventually reach that stage, no exceptions. Tech keeps getting better as history marches on, but despotism is ALWAYS the end game with societies that let government have more power than the people, and it turns into an "us versus them" deal and the ones with the most weapons and power and authority win, or there is a revolution and everyone loses because they waited too long to keep things sane.
So keep drinking heavy, blitzed into perpetual stupidity. They *want* you that way, "solving street crime" is NOT their main priority.
That's one of the ways they keep their herds under control. Petty crime, or even a rise in serious crime, is a trivial expense for them to have their populations dumbed down and compliant and accepting all sorts of crap like surveillance cameras, no fly lists, data bases, more and more regulations and "permits" needed for this or that. Drunkeness, drugged, illegal and "doctors prescription" drugs, bread and circuses plus disarm the serfs and peons and heavily arm the state's bully boys=controlled populations. That's the formula they always use.
1% masters controlling 99% of the people, and it is apparently easy to do, it keeps happening over and over again.
According to the British government, there has been a 48% decrease in recorded crime since the peak in 1995, which seems to argue that the proliferation of cameras and draconian gun control have been effective in protecting the safety of Britons.
Unfortunately, recorded violent crimes have approximately doubled since the current record-keeping system was implemented in 1998, and there are compelling reasons to believe that most other categories of crime are now being massively underreported, suggesting that crime problems in Britain are getting much worse despite a near-total ban on guns and the installation of millions of surveillance cameras.
I'd say something isn't working...
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If we had 33.625 times as many cameras, ALL the robbers would have been captured.
Nice reference. Standard boilerplate crime reporting. Now show us the follow up article where the police actually find something useful on the CCTV footage and catch the bad guys..
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
I have read more than a few stories about police taking action against people who are filming them, and complaints about how the police don't want to be recorded so they can get away with abusing the public, etc.
So....do all these cameras keep the police in line, too?
And if so, does that, in any way, change their desirability in the minds of the privacy advocates?
Are kinder police be worth the price of electronic eyes on every public street corner?
Ahhh... but local councils have turned it into a prodigious cash cow by catching motorists making minor traffic infractions and fining them... as my father found out last week.
But think of the Children/Terrorists/Drugs....
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
Am I the only one who realizes that these massive CCTV surveillance grids have nothing to do with stopping crime?
I live in Baltimore, trust me, cameras don't help. This city keeps getting more violent, dangerous, and crime-ridden every year. Any decrease in numbers you see is simply corrupt policy that selectively reports crimes, failing to do so entirely if they think they can get away with it.
Way to go SpuriousLogic. You take today's top prize for selectively snipping text from a news article to spin a point you want to push. This was actually an article about how ineffective the current use of CCTV image data has been, with an emotive tag line to snag the eyeballs. The article concludes by saying:
Quite different from the spin on this slashdot story huh. But then you knew that didn't you, and you knew the much of the Slashdot crowd would just lap it up.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And it's not just alcohol.
Little example: You are walking the street. The street is nicely covered with cameras, everything is recorded by the police. Some guy comes to you and robs you of your wallet and phone. As expected, this crime is properly recorded.
So, you go to police to file "what ever it is called" and expect police to find the perpetrator and give you back your wallet and phone. Should be easy, right?
Well, in reality they will simply try to convince you they can't do anything about it because "there are lots of such small incidents and even IF they do look at the tapes, and even IF they do successfully identify the guy, and even IF they do find him quite quickly, you wont get your wallet and phone back - wallet would be long since empty and discarded somewhere and phone sold". And even getting the man to court would be quite ... expansive and the resulting conviction ... unsatisfactory.
In IT terms, cameras do not scale properly and small criminals are flooding them so much that they are not effective.
So yes, sometimes cameras can help with something big. But otherwise they are not helping and can be hugely abused (if not already).
IMHO.
hany
I've always believed that "to solve crimes" was only a lame excuse to allow Big Brother to monitor the citizens.
Like many of the issues discussed here it really is about 'control'. Who has it and who wants to dictate it.
I've come to the conclusion that I fear an out of control Government more that I fear terrorists/serial killers/Death Flu/etc
I think a lot of people would reverse that, saying that the surveillance itself is wrong, but that if you see a crime committed, then arresting the perp is right.
But that aside, the main point of TFA is that the surveillance just isn't effective. Most especially, that it isn't cost effective. Just as wars are won by troops on the ground, not air wars (no matter how much you bomb somebody, a bomber can't occupy territory), so crime isn't solved or prevented by huge numbers of CCTV cameras. Crime is prevented/solved by officers on the beat, doing good old-fashioned police work. Sure, they can and should use technology to assist with that work - laptop-equipped patrol cars, for example - but technology is not a substitute for police work. Trying to make it so is the mistaked of the CCTV system.