http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/6087
Cambridge pilots CCTV texting service
Source: Cambridge City Council
Published Wednesday, 24 May, 2006 - 05:00
It has long been recognised that one of the most effective ways of
fighting crime, anti-social behaviour and terrorism is through public
vigilance.
There are only 158 cameras in Cambridge, Ely and Soham but
potentially there are something in the region of 170,000 pairs of
eyes living, working and playing in these areas — who can see a lot
more than the police or CCTV cameras ever can.
The CCTV system has worked hard to establish partnership working with
several organisations but now we must try and establish joint working
with potentially one of the most important partners of all — the public.
It is not operationally practical to give out the CCTV Control Room
telephone number but the City Council feels that it is important that
people have some means of contacting CCTV when they see something
going on which they believe is wrong. So from the 1st June 2006 CCTV
will introduce a pilot texting service for the public to contact the
CCTV Control Room direct.
This is we believe a new concept for CCTV which has not been tried
anywhere else and although the initial idea came from Cambridge City
Council’s CCTV department, it could not have come to fruition without
the financial support of the Council’s Reception and Office Services
Manager and the council's IT support team from SERCO.
The first thing that must be stressed when considering sending a text
is that:
* all crimes committed in Cambridge, Ely and Soham must be
reported to the Police first by dialling 999 for serious incidents
and 0845-4564564 in all other cases.
* Then the public can contact the CCTV Control Room by texting
62288 (the last four digits spells 'CCTV' on your textpad) and
sending their message.
Senders should remember that:
* CCTV can only deal with incidents within the cameras’ arcs of
observation
* Several locations have the same name — for example both
Cambridge and Ely have Market Squares
* Senders must text the name of the city or town
* So the message should contain the location and type of the
incident e.g. 'Market Sq, Cambridge. Fight'
* The text message will then appear on a screen in front of the
CCTV Operators and the caller will receive an acknowledgement that
the message has been received.
* The CCTV Operator will then read the message and prioritise it.
* Please note that an incident involving for example an assault
will take a higher priority than a shoplifter.
* Once the message has been checked and prioritised the CCTV
Operator will use the cameras to locate the incident.
* Once the incident has been located, the CCTV Operator will
start recording it and then call the Police Control Room and show the
images to the Police who will then decide how to deal with the incident.
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