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'Spy' cameras vs villains in Britain
By Al Webb
United Press International
Published 3/8/2002 3:18 PM
LONDON, March 8 (UPI) -- Big brother is big business in the battle against crime in
Britain, but photo-shy villains have developed a bag of new tricks to elude the gaze of
thousands of surveillance cameras that now dot its cities, towns and villages.
With 1.5 million closed-circuit television systems watching its streets, office
buildings,
schools, shopping centers and roads, Britain is one of the most closely monitored
nations on the planet, and the government is spending another $115 million for more
TV eyes.
But crime is soaring across the country. In London, a city of 8 million people, murder
is going on at a record pace. Street robbery, the very crime that CCTV is supposed
to be best at deterring, will reach 50,000 this year.
The problem, one exasperated police source told United Press International, is that
"the TV cameras can't be everywhere. There are hundreds of thousands of nooks
and crannies left, everywhere you look, and this is where criminals are increasingly
operating. And when a camera shows up, they move elsewhere."
Many of the villains are adapting. Some are targeting luxury cars on the move so that
any view a TV camera gets of them is fleeting at best. Others conceal their street
muggings by grabbing their victims in a clinch that, on CCTV, looks like nothing more
than a romantic hug.
Police say criminals discouraged by the prospect of an unwanted TV appearance in
London or other cities take to commuting to the countryside where prospective
victims are more trusting and the pickings are easier.
"There is more security-consciousness now in urban areas, which makes it less easy
for the thief, than in the countryside where, generally speaking, people have tended
to be more lax," said Nicholas Bond, a spokesman for NFU Mutual, an insurance
company specializing in rural communities.
"There is a feeling that opportunist crime is moving out toward the rural areas," said
Ian Fraser of CGNU, one of Britain's largest household contents insurers.
The British government is convinced that TV surveillance will remain a major anti-
crime weapon and recently announced that it is financing the installation of more
than 200 closed-circuit monitoring systems, from London to provincial cities and
towns.
"CCTV has repeatedly proved its effectiveness in the fight against crime and the fear
of crime," said John Denham, a minister in the Home Office. "Knowing that there is
an extra set of eyes watching over their communities helps to reassure people that
they will be safe."
Experts are convinced that more advanced technology is making CCTV an even
more valuable tool.
In the city of Hull, for instance, a test project in one crime-ridden area is based on
a
new, Internet-based CCTV system using tiny cameras disguised in street lamps or
concealed on buildings to transmit digital pictures to a monitoring center around the
clock. Authorities said an independent evaluation of the system showed that in the
first five months of operation, car crime in the area was down 80 percent, shoplifting
was down 69 percent, robbery was down 68 percent, burglary was down 49 percent
and violent crime is down 30 percent.
"As the system is digital," said project manager John Marshall, "there are no video
tapes, and images are transferred instantly from camera to computer, where the data
can be transferred to police stations by the Internet."
Other local governments are interested in the idea, but cost could become a major
deterrent. The system in the Hull trial cost an estimated $570,000 for protection of
3,200 residents.
Meanwhile, other areas are reporting less-than-spectacular success with big brother
technology. In London's Newham district, 300 cameras are dotted around the central
business area yet street robberies increased by one-fifth in 2001 from the previous
year, and car thefts climbed by 3.6 percent.
"Although CCTV cameras might be useful within a broadly based anti-crime
strategy," said one specialist, "turning the nation's city and town streets into
seamless surveillance zones is itself no substitute for proper policing."
A three-year study commissioned by the British government and conducted by the
Scottish Center for Criminology suggested that "spy" cameras had little or no effect
on crime. It concluded that "reductions were noted in certain categories, but there
was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall."
"The cameras appeared to have little effect on clear-up rates for crimes and
offenses" the report said.
The findings "have taken the stardust out of our eyes about this new technology,"
said Jason Dittion, a criminologist and the study's main author.
CCTV's defenders point out that it was such technology that recorded the abduction
of 2-year-old James Bulger in a Liverpool shopping center by a pair of 10-year-old
boys who later bludgeoned him to death. The TV evidence was key to their arrest
and conviction.
At the other end of the scale, police forces across the land are using surveillance
cameras to "capture" and convict thousands of speeders and other traffic violators --
and the local government in Merton, in south London, is using its 60 CCTV
surveillance cameras to zero in on litterbugs.
The use of surveillance cameras in policing has, perhaps inevitably, attracted frowns
from civil liberties groups, who see them as an infringement on individual rights.
"I don't think anyone has really thought through the implications of all this," said
Simon Davies, of the civil rights watchdog group Privacy International.
"What tends to happen is you start penalizing extreme or unusual behavior, which
leads to social exclusion," Davies said. "And it won't be just criminals. A safer and
more efficient Britain is not necessarily a better society."
The police see life under the camera's view somewhat differently.
"When cameras are properly targeted," said Graeme Gerrard, a spokesman for the
Association of Chief Police Officers, "they can deter offenders, reduce the level of
crime and increase the feeling of safety for those using our public spaces."
The surveillance camera as a public amenity is here to stay, but the arguments about
usefulness, legality and ethicality have only just begun.
Copyright � 2002 United Press International
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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