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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.'"
Especially as most people convicted aren't actually punished anyway. What's the point in using expensive technology to catch a thief then just giving him a small fine or a caution?
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
Last year, the headline was "One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras".
The rate can't be much better this year.
- RG>
Well, it would seem to be much better.
From the article, there's just under 60,000 cameras now. Six crimes solved per day times 365 days = about 2,200 crimes solved. So that's about one crime solved per 30 cameras per year.
Going from 1/1000 to 1/30 is a massive improvement, though I'm guessing that the difference isn't just the police program reaching maturity or something like that. For starters, I'll bet they count crimes differently between the two programs.
Still, even the modern figure seems pretty bad. So you've got 30 cameras up all year, with all the needed infrastructure behind these 30 cameras, and all together, they solved one crime. A quarter million hours of surveillance (30 cameras * 24 hours * 365 days) and you only solve one crime.
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.
What's the point of giving petty* thieves more than a small fine or a caution upon conviction?
Should everyone, no matter how minor or severe the infraction, be sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, where they get to make big rocks into little rocks until they die and get buried under a small white cross across the way from their cell?
Should the presence of video evidence, or the lack thereof, contribute to such sentencing? Or perhaps more importantly: Should the expense of such video evidence be a factor in the sentencing?
Discuss.
*: I wanted to use the word "minor" there, as in "minor infraction." But that might be confused with "minors," so I didn't use that word. "Petty" is the best I could come up with, though it doesn't quite fit either, but at the same time I wanted to be concise. In a twist of irony, in the course failing to conjure a better adjective than "minor" for the sake of being concise, it seems that this footnote has eliminated all concision in an attempt to explain my choice of words lest they be misconstrued by the pedants here (of which I am one). Bummer.
Kid-proof tablet..
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?
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.
The figures don't follow the actuality. 60,000 cameras may "belong" to the police, but if you add in the private cameras (which you must do in order to be realistic) the number in London is now actually over 1 million.
Should everyone, no matter how minor or severe the infraction, be sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, where they get to make big rocks into little rocks until they die and get buried under a small white cross across the way from their cell?
Nope, but I think we could make more of a point about where they're headed if they continue down that road; eg. A second offense could earn them a mandatory seven days banged up with somebody unpleasant, just to give them a taste of what "grown-up" prison is like.
It's got to be better than the stupid ASBO system - which just teaches them that the police have no real power over them.
No sig today...
The problem is that sentencing in the UK is pretty lax for non-petty crimes as well. And victims are often prosecuted if they do anything to try to protect themselves. It's a system that rewards violence, punishes resistance, and doesn't provide any incentive to change for the criminals.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Sure you can: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/GlasgowCCTV.html
The drop in crime with cameras is the exact same as the drop in crime everywhere. If the cameras themselves had anything to do with it, you'd see a larger drop in crime where they're used.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
But then you'd have polaroids, which can be much more painful.
They are right, they caught me doing an illegal right turn on a scooter with CCTV and sent me a ticket. Crime +1.
However, when I was hit by a hit and run driver under such a camera, flew over the bonnet but managed to get their license plate number and call it in immediately. Nada. They wouldn't even go around to the persons place where the car was registered and the investigation unit told me they would *never* go around to someone's place for a hit and run unless there was serious injury inflicted and then repeated *serious*.
When I left a bag behind in the Eurostar with expensive camera lens and called it in immediately. When I got the bag back there was a lens from 300 quid missing. I called the transport police. I thought they would have trouble seeing the lens on the screen but he reported that he couldn't identify me. Despite that I was wearing motorcycle gear and arrying a motocycle topbox. I suspect he didn't even look.
So yeah. They are definately used to give tickets to criminals breaking traffic laws and for parking illegally as well.And they have been seen to be peering deep into people's bedrooms. Possibly they are used in very large crimes, but when the policitians talk crime I imagine that most people think of across the spectrum crime. If they knew that in reality 95% of all crime that could benefit from CCTV detection it isn't even bothered with they might think differently. Joe public won't have a clue unless they can tally it up against personal experience and in my case it sucks.
That's why Britain has sky-high crime rates compared to execution-happy Texas.
Oh wait....
Heh, and here is some more anecdotal evidence.
1. Van parked in loading bay for ten minutes while the load was being delivered and the return load was being dragged to the van ( ie the van was unmanned for ten minutes ). Result - Vehicle's registered owner hit by hundred and something quid fine.
2. Taxi reverses into my car and stoves in the passenger side doors, then drives away. Result - Cops say the registered owner cannot find out who was driving at the time so they (the cops) can't do anything.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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"
Wow you're claiming being filmed by a CCTV camera is the same as a false accusation. Congratulations, on a page full of paranoid nut jobs, you are the craziest.
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.
Haven't you noticed that no one will ever admit fault or error, nor even change their opinion in the slightest when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary? The only reason Wikipedia is slammed so hard here is that it's a great resource to exposing lazy (because they won't look it up) idiots who have incomprehensible opinions. Or then, it could just be that people are hard-wired to not change opinions. And whether by genetics coupled with the greater fuckwad theory or Asperger's/OCD, the result is the same.
It happens occasionally. Though I can't think of a time when a poster actually admitted they'd changed there opinion.
Slashdot posts have changed my opinion many times. Why only this morning I was forced to reconsider my former opposition to retroactive abortion...
There was also the argument that he had already been punished for his crimes through the justice system, and it would have been unjust to subject him to a further punishment.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Just a scapegoat. The same trend (very low crime in 1900, crazy crime rate by 2000) has occurred outside EU influence, for example in New Zealand and some parts of America. I'm not saying that the ECHR isn't part of the problem, but it is certainly not the cause.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Your ideas have been tried in Britain... down to the letter. Incentives and opportunities - done it. "Prison makes bad people worse" - done it.
They don't work.
Even now, our "conservative" Home Secretary is parroting the same old lines about "community punishments" that we've been hearing for decades. He says exactly what you say - which is exactly what all of his recent predecessors have said. As if just a bit more leniency, understanding, incentive, opportunity will suddenly make all the difference. If it isn't working, do it some more.
If you want to look to History to justify your anti-prison beliefs, then you must look at the 19th century, where the crime rate was extremely in comparison to the present. One difference between their society and ours was their use of austere prisons - prisons run by the jailers rather than the inmates, with tough discipline. These were prisons that people didn't want to return to. Those are the sort of prisons you want.
Otherwise, what? Well, you're right! You're left with two options - hang them all, or do nothing. Neither is any good. Hence the third option: proper prisons, and a legal system and police force willing to use them.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
It's also possible that the ineffectiveness of the justice system forces the people to never bother to report crimes to begin with, which in turn artificially forces the crime rate to go down. After all, the statistics only cover the ones which are officially reported.
That's one reason that the most trustworthy crime rate is the murder rate. Very few murders in the first world are not reported.
The murder rate in Texas is much higher than in the UK (citation somewhere in the internet...).
The overall crime rate in the UK is supposed to be similar to that in the US, it's mainly the murder rate that is different. (Although, as stated above, the other rates are hard to compare.)
The first point you make is true, at least if you consider non-custodial sentencing to be lax, although I don't agree with you that it's a bad thing; in the UK at least prison governors have repeatedly stated that imposing short custodial sentences leads to increased reoffending because it disrupts the person's life, often leaving them unemployed and homeless on their release, but doesn't give them enough time inside to receive useful training or counselling.
The second point, though, is the one I really wanted to respond to, as it is a complete untruth. UK law, to summarise enormously, allows anyone to respond to a perceived threat with a reasonable amount of force. It also accepts that people cannot be expected to weigh the amount of force required exactly in the heat of the moment and therefore gives them a great deal of leeway. What's more, the CPS guidelines, as well as containing the general proposition that prosecution should only be undertaken where it is in the public interest, also states that "it is important to ensure that all those acting in good faith to defend themselves, their family, their property, or in the prevention of crime or the apprehension of offenders are not prosecuted for their actions". It is only where the degree of force used is manifestly disproportionate (as in the case some time ago of a 20-something-year-old man who was pushed on the shoulder by a pensioner and "defended himself" by punching the man to death) or where it has crossed the line from self-defence to vigilantism that a prosecution will even be begun, let alone a conviction secured.
The tabloid media regularly stir up controversy by claiming that people are being prosecuted for defending themselves from violent criminals. I am yet to encounter a single case of this nature in which a person has been sentenced for what was in actuality self defence (take, for example, the Tony Martin case, portrayed by the tabloids as reasonable self defence, but where even a cursory inspection of the case report shows that the killing was pre-meditated and that his claims in court had been shown to be untrue; or the recent case where the media claimed a man had been imprisoned for defending his family, but where the "defence" took place after all danger had passed, when the father had rounded up some friends, armed himself and beaten the assailant almost to death on the street). Repeated Government reviews have come to the same conclusion; there is simply no foundation to the claim that victims are prosecuted for reasonable self defence.
Well, it would seem to be much better.
From the article, there's just under 60,000 cameras now. Six crimes solved per day times 365 days = about 2,200 crimes solved. So that's about one crime solved per 30 cameras per year.
Errrrhum. That's 60,000 CCTVs in Britain vs. 2200 solved crimes in London. Spot the difference.
Fandroids hate facts.
Well, it would seem to be much better.
From the article, there's just under 60,000 cameras now. Six crimes solved per day times 365 days = about 2,200 crimes solved. So that's about one crime solved per 30 cameras per year.
Going from 1/1000 to 1/30 is a massive improvement, though I'm guessing that the difference isn't just the police program reaching maturity or something like that. For starters, I'll bet they count crimes differently between the two programs.
Still, even the modern figure seems pretty bad. So you've got 30 cameras up all year, with all the needed infrastructure behind these 30 cameras, and all together, they solved one crime. A quarter million hours of surveillance (30 cameras * 24 hours * 365 days) and you only solve one crime.
Apples and oranges I'm afraid. TFA refers to 2,512 crimes solved with the help of CCTV in London, while the just under 60,000 cameras refers to the whole of Britain. This figure also, I assume, refers to ones with a police or other government agency employee at the other end, but from the text the chap from the Met appears to be referring to all forms of CCTV.
Even if the figures were all apples-to-apples they wouldn't be worth analysing anyway. What does "help solve" mean? Actually, I'm a bit concerned what they mean by "crimes" since they later see fit to reduce it to "suspects caught", oh and by the way those 4 "suspected murderers" - suspected? I thought these crimes were solved?
What do they mean "five wanted gunmen"? So... Are we saying the CCTV merely helped them locate people they were already looking for? That has value and everything but the further we get through the article the further we get away from the initial impression where CCTV stills are being paraded in court as Exhibit A.
The entire article is meaningless gibberish. The most I can take from it is that this is the best the Met can do to talk up the effectiveness of the cameras. On the plus side, they are clearly really really bad at fudging the data to look good.
Oh, and install a phone-home virus on it so that if they plug it into a PC I can tell the police how to find them.
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.
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
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.
I'm afraid that that simply isn't true. Reasonable is not be defined as "lawful", and logical consideration makes it clear that to say that it is would be an absurdity; the function of a defence of self defence being to make what would otherwise be unlawful lawful, it would make no sense for legality to be a prerequisite.
Stabbing an intruder with a locking knife (which is, I assume, what a "lockback" is - I'm not familiar with the term) will not necessarily mean the force used was not reasonable. (Note two things: that a locking knife is not an illegal item or a registrable item under UK law, and that the concept of reasonableness is not the same as the concept of proportionality, although clearly the force used against the person will be a big factor in determining how much force it would be reasonable for him to use in defence). Neither is shooting someone necessarily unreasonable, and there are cases in which a defence of self-defence has been accepted when the attacker was shot. Your choice of phrasing, however, does lead to two situations where the force would seem likely to have been unreasonable; stabbing a person to death is only going to be reasonable in dire circumstances, and shooting 'an intruder' encompasses many situations where the danger would not even nearly justify a deadly response.
You refer to the "maximum force" that is permitted as possession of a cricket bat. This is a confusion of two different terms. Force is what is excused by self defence. Possession of illegal weaponry is not (unless the creation of acquisition of the weapon was a response to the threat - a rare situation but one which does occur, as in the case of the man who succeeded in a claim of self defence after fashioning molotov cocktails to defend his home from rioters). If the force used is unreasonable, in the eyes of a jury, given the situation as you perceived it, then the defence of self-defence will fail whether you used a gun, a cricket bat or a cardboard tube. If the jury considers the force used to have been reasonable in the circumstances then they will acquit, even if the force was applied with a dangerous weapon. In this case, of course, there may well be separate charges of possessing a dangerous weapon.
Regarding the duty to retreat, I am not sure to what statute you are referring - my knowledge of 16th-century legislation is somewhat flaky. However there is no duty to retreat in modern English law and there is ample caselaw supporting that fact (e.g. R v Bird 81 Cr App R 110).
-The European Convention on Human Rights, which is what you're probably talking about, isn't part of EU jurisprudence.
-The ECHR was ratified by the UK in 1953, and has shaped UK law since then. It is not a recent influence, although recourse to the ECHR is easier since the 1998 Human Rights Act
-The ECHR was drafted largely by English lawyers and draftsmen, and the UK had a great deal of influence. As a result it contains very little that was not drawn from already-existent English law.
-The rights conferred are such crazy things as the right to life, to freedom from torture, freedom from slavery, the right to a fair trial and protection from retrospective criminalisation. It was largely a response to the inhuman activities of the Nazis during and immediately prior to World War II; the courts have regard to this and avoid applying it to trivial cases as this is clearly not its reason for being.
Are you sure? But you say crime is caused by:No, I don't. I said *some* crime is caused by that.
Am I to understand that you believe if society were improved, such that there was (1) no desperation and (2) violence was not condoned, then crime would be isolated and rare?
Some types of crime certainly would be.
If so, then I think my statement, "You seem to be saying that crime happens because society is broken", is actually quite an accurate summary. "Widespread compliance" will be achieved naturally, you say, if only society is sufficiently stable and prosperous.
No, because you are trying to paint the situation as a simple black and white with a "crime" or "no crime" result.
No matter, though. What you say has exposed the deeper point of disagreement. I believe that society cannot be stable or prosperous unless it is willing to enforce laws.
I'm not quite sure where the disagreement is.
Even against large numbers of people, if necessary.
Generally speaking, if you have to "enforce" laws against "large numbers of people", they're bad laws and shouldn't exist in the first place.
We can surely come up with examples of crimes that would occur in a stable, prosperous society even if there were no threat of punishment. Tax evasion, for example. I bet you would agree that tax evasion is a serious crime, especially when large sums of money are involved.. and yet it is also a crime that would be very common if no action were taken against tax evaders. What's the incentive to do your taxes properly, if you know that 90% of the population are cheating and getting away with it?
You are arguing against a straw man. No-one said that laws shouldn't be enforced.
Social pressure alone is not enough to discourage crime; punishment is required as well.
Social pressure is quite enough to discourage most crime, and is by far the preferable option. This why most civilised societies do not robotically impose authoritarian and draconian punishments on their citizens to keep them in line.
If the threat of prison will discourage city bankers from cheating on their taxes, then the threat of prison will also discourage house burglars and muggers.
Why ? These are two very different classes of crime, with very different perpetrators, motivations and outcomes.
Indeed, this is the sort of thing you will find in right-wing tabloids, but that doesn't make it axiomatically wrong. And yes, it is simple, but simplicity is good - remember the KISS principle. To me, the 20th century crime figures coupled with the notable absence of crime in places where criminals are not tolerated (e.g. Singapore) are hard evidence: robust law enforcement is all that is necessary for a stable and prosperous society. It takes a specially trained person - a criminologist, for example - to deny that the simplest solution is also the correct one.
To any complex problem, there is always at least one solution that is obvious, simple, and wrong.