Neighbourhood watch CCTV cameras and systems
Mention Neighbourhood watch and people's first thoughts are of curtain twitching busy bodies who do little to reduce crime. It doesn't help when members are filmed putting domestic pets in wheelie bins and there are times when efforts can be full of good intention but a little lacking in substance. However there are times when Neighbourhood watch or similar schemes can be supremely effective in reducing crime. Some of the most exciting work we do is with a local community project and the detection rates achieved have been nothing short of amazing.
So what have we done, why has it been so successful and what lessons can be learnt ?
Our main role has been to ensure people fit the right CCTV systems . Traditionally domestic CCTV systems tend to come in the form of fixed lens fairly wide angle cameras recording to a cheap and cheerful DVR recorder. The first thing we did was to educate the organisers. We showed them that to capture detail you need to zoom in on a subject. This meant the area covered by a camera was smaller but the images captured were useful in terms of identification.
Where the community groups score is that they know exactly where to concentrate the CCTV cameras. They know how criminals are gaining entry to properties, they know the roads criminals are using to access their targets and they also know which areas are being targeted. This means they can use the technical knowledge we give them to ensure any equipment installed is effective.
The other way in which community crime prevention groups can increase the effectiveness of CCTV is to co-ordinate the different installations in their area. When a home owner uses one of their cameras to film a road for instance they might capture critical number plate details of a suspect vehicle. Other times a criminal might have visited the CCTV equipped property prior to committing their crime elsewhere and information can be gleaned to help identify the suspect.
A good example of this would be a confidence trickster or distraction burglar. Someone comes to you door claiming to be from a utility company or other institution, whilst they engage your attention or get you to run around turning taps on they rob you. It may have been they visited someone else's home who had CCTV installed prior to visiting you and the community group can co-ordinate that quickly to provide Police with vital information.
Even with something like a vehicle theft, the criminals may have driven past a neighbours CCTV system at some stage prior to committing the crime. We had one instance where they parked their get away vehicle right in front of a neighbour's CCTV system! The community group network can vastly improve the effectiveness of individual CCTV installations in this way.
The other way Neighbourhood watch and similar groups help improve CCTV effectiveness is with their Police liaison contacts. Everyone has heard circumstantial reports of Police not acting on CCTV footage but the problem faced by Police officers is the quality of images simply isn't good enough and so they loose faith in many domestic installations. The community crime prevention groups can establish a dialogue with the Police to establish what needs to be recorded by CCTV systems and then work to ensure people fitting CCTV meet those targets.
Our experience is that Police forces are very keen on quality CCTV evidence and act quickly on good footage. In a recent case a house was burgled and the criminals filmed carrying their newly acquired loot. Not only that but the registration number of the vehicle they were travelling in was filmed. Less than 48 hours later 2 arrests had been made, all through good quality domestic CCTV systems and a strong neighbourhood network,
The great thing for crime prevention groups is that the funding for the CCTV equipment comes from individual home owners who were considering fitting CCTV cameras anyway so there is no need for outside financial aid. By working with the community group the householder is not only given additional practical and technical advice but they also benefit from other people's CCTV systems. It's a bit like a firework display, buy and watch your own fireworks and they soon fizzle out, form a community and suddenly you have a worthwhile display.
For us working with community crime prevention groups has been immensely satisfying. The individuals involved are usually extremely keen and hard working, given the tools of good CCTV they suddenly find themselves with the teeth to be effective in crime detection and prevention.
We recently won an award at the IFSEC Global security awards held in association with BSIA, the British Security Industry Association for a community CCTV partnership with Hillingdon Residents Against Crime. In this scheme, which is still very active there have been a significant number of instances where the information from domestic CCTV systems has been used to detect criminal activity, identify criminals and secure convictions.