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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?
"... 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 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.
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....
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.
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.
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.
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....