Slashdot Mirror
London Police Credit CCTV Cameras With Six Solved Crimes Per Day
stoilis writes "CCTV cameras across London help solve almost six crimes a day, the Metropolitan Police has said. According to the article, 'the number of suspects who were identified using the cameras went up from 1,970 in 2009 to 2,512 this year. The rise in the number of criminals caught also raises public confidence and counters bad publicity for CCTV.'"
Last year, the headline was "One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras".
The rate can't be much better this year.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
You know what would reduce crimes?
Cameras installed in your house, where the powers that be can watch your every move.
Everyone having a tracking tag embedded in their skull so the powers that be can watch your every move.
Police being able to ask people for IDs and have them register as they go from one street or block to the next, so the powers that be can track your every move.
Orwell was so smart, but not in the way people think. We shouldn't see it as a warning so much as a suggestion! Who's with me? Come on! If you're not with me you're against me. You're not a terrorist, are you?!
... was also worthwhile because there were criminals there too.
As long as something 'stops' a few criminals, then that is all that matters. Freedom and privacy are behind stopping terrorism (yes, terrorism) and criminals in order of importance. If you don't wish to sacrifice your liberties for a little security and a government which you must trust at all times, then you're just a terrorist!
FTA: "The Met said among the 2,512 suspects caught this year, four were suspected murderers, 23 rapists and sex attackers and five wanted gunmen."
But, what were the other 2,479 (98.7%)?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Solve, sure. Prevent? Clearly no. Cameras do not prevent crime; only assist in prosecuting.
Reading up on this more I also saw what the BBC reported with dailymail that
But Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said Scotland Yard has revolutionized the use of CCTV by treating it like DNA or fingerprints.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342010/Town-halls-squander-315m-CCTV-years-despite-massive-job-cuts.html#ixzz19OAaItlR
Treated like DNA eh?
Granted this isn't the same era as 12 Angry Men where the woman's eyesight is called into question (aha cameras!), but still it leaves much to be desired unless a clear shot is gained. Being that I do not know much about what is judged as clear, anyone care to help clarify this here for me? Is there some confidence interval? Do they run facial recognition? (Perhaps I just have bad reading comprehension haha)
Point is when someone makes a comparison between fingerprints and DNA to CCTV (not always stellar HD) cameras, I start to wonder...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
A large proportion of the cash has been In London, where an estimated £200 million so far has been spent on the cameras. This suggests that each crime has cost £20,000 to detect.
From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6082530/1000-CCTV-cameras-to-solve-just-one-crime-Met-Police-admits.html (1.5 years ago)
--- I do not moderate.
Out of how many total crimes?
And how many would have been easily solved without CCTV? (Although if it makes it easier with CCTV, that's not so bad)
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
Det Ch Insp Mick Neville, who heads the Met's identification unit, said CCTV images were "treated like fingerprints and DNA" by the force.
Does that mean that now, because it is all digital, they keep the recordings forever, even if no one on a particular recording is suspected of, or committed, any crime at all?
threadeds blog
Also in the article, it takes the police 59000 cameras to solve 6 crimes a day. That's one per 1000 cameras. Doubling the hit rate will require another 60000 cameras, at least. The article fails to state the general crime rate or the percentages of crimes solved. In Wales alone, 215.000 crimes were reported in a year, with a fall in crime rate of 9%. At 2200 crimes solved with cameras in the entire UK, the typical success rate of cameras is 0.1% at best, if you consider the rest of the UK crimeless. With crime falling 9% in Wales, this proves that cameras have no significant influence or help in solving crimes or reducing crime rates whatsoever.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Inbed Identity chips into all citizens so that scanners can keep track of where you are. Actually, they already do this with pets....
Sure it sounds scary now, but just wait until Google partners with Facebook and Twitter: Now with FREE tracking chip integration (with maps, streetview, always on live augmented reality!) Get chipped today!
Everyone will sign up!
I would reckon a single red light camera in Chicago issues at least that many tickets per hour. Either they're pointing the cameras in the wrong direction or Brits really are as civil as they seem to be on Dr. Who.
"... though I'm guessing that the difference isn't just the police program reaching maturity or something like that."
Maybe they are just lying.
Oh hey, it works. Now here's my privacy. Sure, sure, take it. By the bucketload if you can. We've just proven this works!
Someone needs to independently audit those numbers.
The Met said among the 2,512 suspects caught this year, four were suspected murderers, 23 rapists and sex attackers and five wanted gunmen.
Funny... so what do you think the other 2480 were caught doing? Parking tickets probably.
Ah bbc
Yeah - they identified 2500 *suspects* (many of whom would later have turned out to be innocent) at the cost of surveilling 8 million people 24 hours a day for a year. Even if each inhabitant is only filmed once a day, that's well over 2,900 million false accusations of wrongdoing in the year in question, none of which the police have apologised for or compensated the victims of. The police should only surveill people for whom they have a genuine, pre-existing suspicion of intent to commit offences, based on real-world information.
There's a huge difference between a "crime solved" and a "crime detected", as Copperfield, Bloggs, and Bystander have so often explained.
"imaginative testimony" by the police is a staple of British comedy. How do we know that this is not more of the same? Further, to be of any real value, the camera would have to solve enough ADDITIONAL crimes, over and above what would have been solved by "regular" police work to repay, at least, all of the expense of installing and maintaining them in reduced cost of police and/or other losses, and the report just doesn't even hint at that.
The potential criminals gave up before acting when they saw the cameras looking back at them.
While I realize it's hard to measure, I would be interested to know to what extend CCTV prevents crimes rather than solve them. It sounds like the criminals mentioned still managed to commit their crime. They *may* be prevented from future crimes (unlikely for petty crimes in UK), but other than a mild feeling of justice that doesn't help the victims much.
I would also like to know how many crimes were registered by CCTV camera's but could not be solved. This would help to understand how well these camera's could work as a deterrent.
For all the /. whining about camera's in public places not one word of protest is raised about the many hundreds of thousand private security cameras installed in the same type of places. The shopping centre (you yanks may call it a mall), super market, local chippy all have security camera's installed for two reasons, 1. the prevention of crime by notifying potential criminals that they are on film*. 2. To catch a criminal when a crime has occurred. This may sound familiar because it's exactly the reason CCTV camera's are installed.
So for all the caterwauling I hear about London's CCTV cameras I hear nothing, not a single whimper about the many thousands more CCTV cameras operated by private organisation. In my city, Perth there are few hundred public CCTV cameras in places where people tend to get mugged or beaten up after dark, but there are many thousands of private CCTV cameras in every Coles, Woolworths and Big W in the city alone.
Oh, but it's teh evile gubbermint I hear ringing in my ears, that old chestnut. You do know that all the Met (Metropolitan Police) have to do to get privately recorded footage from Mr Blackwell the butcher is ask for it with probable cause. Which is exactly what is needed to access London's public CCTV footage. SHOCK HORROR, the same rules have to be obeyed, in fact seeing as the system is logged and audited they have to be obeyed more stringently and it's not like corporate entities have a history of selling private information, OH WAIT, they do.
So I still don't hear a single murmur of protest against private CCTV networks. Anyone?
Perhaps that is because we've been under CCTV surveillance for a very long time, decades before the first public CCTV camera went up in London and they have proven to be an effective crime prevention and evidence gathering tool in solving crimes in shopping centres. More so I still don't have a telescreen, my house is over 15 KM's from the nearest public CCTV camera and Perth is not a big city. I'd bet a lot of money on the fact that someone wants to put cameras into my home, but it's not the government, it's the bastards who want to make money by selling my private info.
* Criminals are by definition cowards given courage by anonymity, remove that and they revert to their craven state.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I bet the cops loved the fact they could use all the CCTV recognition from the recent student protests against cuts and austerity measures to boost their CCTV statistics.
But the move from VHS to digital technology was a "double-edged sword", he said. "We get high-quality images that are easily searchable but they are often not held as long. "With VHS people held 31 tapes, one for each day of the month, and it did not require specialist officers to get hold of the stuff. "People are now being confronted by computers and hard drives and told to get those images and it is not as easy."
They must be doing something wrong, because for the money they are spending, either the SW or some basic training should make it pretty easy to grab X amount of time off an HD and burn it to a CD, DVD or USB drive. And as fare as holding on to it goes. I have a 650GB HD because it was the smallest one I could find that day. How high quality are these cameras?
The system was set up to track IRA truck bombs. A ton of fertilizer-based explosives, in booby trapped trucks.
As this now seems a distant memory for some, the push is now on to keep the budgets and mindset.
GCHQ is doing net tracking and voice prints. The revenue issues of OCR vehicle license plates is also fun.
CCTV seems to be waiting for something. When the UK gov needs mass face recognition after random net organised riots?
"Cameraman filmed Hungarian revolt" http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/11/local/me-miko11" Miko was shocked to learn that the Soviets had found and confiscated the footage in his locker and were using it to identify people."
Any real threat will be one way, as the IRA showed or false flag/state sponsored groups seem to understand their missions will be one way or testing ect.
Public confidence is low as they have a feel for how this system is going to be upgraded.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The protestors loved that they could film and youtube the police beatings, too. The panopticon looks both ways.
Does anyone know:- The total number of crimes identified per day. The number of crimes 'solved' by other means.
If someone wanted to murder and rob me I would rather a policeman standing where the camera is rather than the camera recording me getting murdered.
Having traveled to London recently, more than helping solve crimes, I believe the main advantage is *preventing* crimes. With its maze of tunnels, the truth is that one feels pretty safe walking on a deserted Underground tunnel when you know there's a CCTV camera dissuading criminals from acting. And this clearly surpasses any pseudo-discomfort from a "Big Brother effect": hey, I've got nothing to hide. If you want to film me, go ahead.
"the number of suspects who were identified using the cameras went up from 1,970 in 2009 to 2,512 this year. "
In every single article posted on slashdot lately. Every single freaking article...
DO THE FREAKING NORMALIZATION IN YOUR FREAKING STUDIES
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The first article claims more crimes solved because of cctv cameras and that there are more cameras.
Yet a quick google shows the actual number of reported crimes has increased, and the number of *convictions* for criminal offenses this year is only slightly higher than the previous year. Based on that cursory research the clear-up rate is roughly the same - and raises the possibility that traditional techniques (investigation and patrol) have been replaced by armchairs occupied by civilians. I was unable to quickly find figures on the number and deployment of police for comparison.
Note: I saw the story about the MET figure fiddling for "clear-ups" - so disregarded those figures and used convictions instead.
How many of those camera's produce footage that is usable in court? I suspect this might be the sort of big-brother-loves-you media spin that's deniable - it can always claimed that cctv footage was used as a basis for further investigations. Sometimes I suspect it's not even Big Brother, just a case of "there, there, I know it hurts, but in a couple of years you'll get over it, and look! Daddies bought you a camera!"
In Aus
I wonder how long they store the video of all these thousands of cameras. It must be a massive amount of data.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
It amazes me how much Brits are ok with being subjects of the Crown. I scares me to think about a government where there is no written constitution, no (for better or worse) written list of rights. Our rights are quickly eroding here, I don't know how you've managed to last so long.
The abuses that I see Brits suffering (heat vision cameras being used in their home for energy initiatives) CCTV cameras... George Orwell had you guys nailed. But then again, he was one of you. Disposable razor blades I am sure are about to be outlawed because of environmental impact initiatives The only thing he got wrong was that the US is carrying on military operations in far away lands. (Albeit with some coalition/UK help) But still not bad.
Now we just have to get our people (US) to see that we're in "permanent war for permanent peace" because war is the health of the state. It's so expensive its its own stimulus. Every deployed troop has 8 on the back end supporting them. With 1,580,255 active duty personnel, relieving them of duty would spike unemployment, not to mention the government contractors that would have drastic budget cuts. Still, this kind of problem only requires a few years of Tea Party occupation or Bill Clinton to fix. The thousands of CCTV cameras are much harder to remove once they have given perceived security. Erosion only goes one way.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
So....five?
Loading...
Just imagine how many they could solve if they got off their fat arses and got out to where real crime occurs and not hanging around in London checking out the new donut shops and thinking of creative ways to beat up some poor invalid and not getting caught.
Great statistic... if you can trust it. What would you expect the police to say? Might the crimes have been solved anyway, without the CCTV?
And, more importantly, where does it stop? Hey, if CCTV stops crimes think of how many MORE crimes could be stopped with more CCTV. Hey, I bet a LOT of crimes could be stopped if the police were allowed to just randomly kick in people's doors and search their homes.
Proverbs 21:19
The Met also said they didn't charge protesters with horses a couple of weeks back.
This was approximately one day after I'd already seen three or four videos of the Met charging protesters with horses.
CCTV cameras 'help solve' 2,500 crimes in London; 60,000 (council-operated?) cameras in the UK
estimate. 10,000 cameras in London (2008 figure - 7,431 [source]) So it takes 4 cameras one year to 'help solve' one crime.
There were 809,350 crimes reported in London in the 12 months to November 2010 [source: Metropolitan Police Service]. Of these, 2,500 were 'helped solved' by cameras. 0.3%. That's a fantastically small figure. Had the police, ten or twenty years ago, approached the Home Office for funding for CCTV with the claim that it would 'help solve' 0.3% of crimes in the capital, they wouldn't have received a penny.
Lets look at the 'serious' crimes.
4 murderers (out of 112 reported crimes, december 2009-november 2010)
23 rapists and sex attackers (out of 9285 reported crimes, december 2009-november 2010)
The figures are not prosecutions, not convictions, and are not even definitive pieces of evidence - the expression is 'helped solve'.
These are shockingly insignificant numbers and a convincing reason to remove all cameras and kill their associated budgets.
...install them in the parliament offices - since we know that they work.
Lede says "Six crimes a day solved by CCTV, Met says" when body says "CCTV cameras across London help solve almost six crimes a day". help solve is not the same thing as solved.
Then we have "The number of suspects who were identified using the cameras went up from 1,970 in 2009 to 2,512 this year."
How many perps? Well "The Met said among the 2,512 suspects caught this year, four were suspected murderers, 23 rapists and sex attackers and five wanted gunmen.". That adds up to 32 to me... for how many CCTVs in the Metro area of London?
Somehow explaining this is going to fit both the thread "autism" and the topic, street crime. You see, "Get a room" is a phrase yelled at hookers and their customers who are violating public morals in the street. As American slang it's used toward young people engaged in excessive public displays of affection, or sarcastically towards people who are bickering. None of which is going on here. It takes a lot more than one or two back-and-forths to be socially inappropriate.
On some blogs though you'll see ids follow each other from thread to thread, repeating the same idiotic chatter at each other as if there was some purpose to it other than to consume the maximum number of blog posts. It's not a dialog - each is just ranting - because neither is listening and their bickering is so heated nobody else is talking to them either. In that case the rare "get a room" can be helpful to get a climate where dialog can occur. You know - the fun stuff the rest of us are here for. People who find themselves trapped in a loop like that are better off stepping aside, crafting a couple longer and well-researched posts with great care, sharing those and letting go of the bickering - because then at least the greater audience will read what they wrote.
But /. has moderation, and doesn't really need that. When discussions get that inane here, both parties are modded to the point where their discussion doesn't bother everybody.
And explaining things like this probably means I should get checked out for a little ASD myself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This report seems to be inconsistent with an early report by the same news agency (also covered previously by slashdot)
One article reports 8 crimes per month (96 crimes in 2009) and the other reports 1,970 crimes solved in 2009. One article reports million-plus cameras and the other reports 59,000.
Is this a case of changing the data to support an argument?
Even if the cameras do solve the crime they claim it does, do you still want to live that way?
I just don't get why the Brits aren't more upset at the establishment 'keeping any eye' on them 24/7. Its already been proven that given the # of laws on the books NO-ONE can avoid committing an infraction against the law. A camera system that extensive means the gov't has the ability or at least the means to prosecute just about everyone in the country. Not to mention that treating everyone in the country as lawbreakers would do nothing more than enforce bad behavior, or at least anti-social behavior. I would think everyone would be walking around with Anonymous masks in public just to keep the illusion of privacy... or is anonymity illegal too?
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
From the summary CCTV cameras help Brits solve crimes... Good, right?
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." - George Orwell, 1984 "From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." -George Orwell 1984
Everything will be all right. You are in my hands. I am here to protect you. You have nowhere to go. You have nowhere to go.
We are here to protect you. Shoving is the answer; humans must be shoved. They must go down the stairs. Please go stand by the stairs. Shoving will protect you from the terrible secret of space.
Of course installing cameras helps in identification and prosecution of criminals. What these statistics don't mention is that the overall crime rate is more or less unchanged before/after the cameras. I'm all for prosecuting criminals, but these statistics are selected to make it seem like the cameras improve safety or reduce the cost of crime, and neither of those things is true -- this is an attempt to reframe the discussion from "cameras keep us safe", which they clearly don't to "cameras catch criminals" which is true but not what was promised.
They think catching 6 extra jaywalkers a day is worth erecting an expensive and abusive panopticon?
1 - that's a small percentage in comparison to the amount of cameras. You would get the same effect by shooting every 10th person that passes. If you ignore that sort of collateral damage like CCTV ignores privacy you can conclude that on a statistical basis that you're doing a good job and your solution is working.
2 - CCTV is NEVER sold to the public on the basis that it help SOLVE crime. It is always sold as something that will PREVENT crime, which is a total lie (independently proven by various research groups).
Just say no..
Insert
is zero percent. Just wanted to make sure everybody was clear on that.
Russia has a really low recidivism rate. Criminals truly fear being sent back to prison.
The guards sometimes beat everybody as a group. The guards pick prisoners to dish out the day-to-day discipline and order, rewarding them with special treatment. If one of those prisoners gets killed, the killer is sometimes chosen to take his place. Nutrition is terrible and disease runs rampant. Despite written law to the contrary, prisoners are frequently imprisoned thousands of miles from home. Often this is above the arctic circle, and the prison isn't heated all that well. It's common to provide 2 square meters for a prisoner.
We provide classes, weight lifting equipment, TV, video games...
See the difference? Fear **works** but we aren't providing it.
Nice! I wish I had thought of that. I use the site: restriction all the time, especially for searches on microsoft.com. Funny that I have had to use Google all these ywars to search the MSKB.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
So you are saying we should treat criminals as sub-human? Maybe you are okay with that but I believe in a certain minimum level of humanity that should be shown to everyone, regardless.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's necessary. We can't afford the crime, and we can't afford to comfortably warehouse all the troublesome people. That leaves torture, execution, and the semi-torture of a Russian-style or 3rd-world prison.
I have no problem with the use of stoning, crucifiction, impalement, the breaking wheel, burning at the stake, drowning in pig shit, consumption by botfly larva, consumption by dogs, flaying, disembowelment, etc. This is especially true for second-time offenders, since both rehabilitation and wrongful conviction are practically impossible once there is a second conviction.
Well that would be okay if justice was perfect and you could trust those in power absolutely. Actually it still wouldn't be okay.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC