videosurveillance – Page 12

CCTV is good for something… or is it?

MSNBC has some great footage of US Airways 1549 that crash-landed in the Hudson yesterday, taken from CCTV cameras on a nearby wharf.

However well this footage shows the undoubted skill of the pilot, I can’t help thinking every time I see this kind of use of CCTV footage that it must play a really important part in the process of normalisation. The fact that people can see footage from CCTV on the news adds to a largely mistaken impression that video surveillance ‘works’. It doesn’t matter whether the footage is of an amazing tale of heroism and survival, a crash or a crime prevented or committed, the images have a pre-rational power. They create a ‘demand’ for more cameras or the idea that they are necessary even though we may be watching something that nothing to do with the purpose of the cameras, and may even, as in the case of images of crime occurring, be witnessing the overt failure of the preventative purpose of CCTV.

Still, great video, isn’t it?

San Francisco CCTV (slight return)

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a murder suspect was arrested as a result of CCTV footage. This comes hot on the heels of the critical report that I mentioned a few days ago. Is it a coincidence that we see these kinds of stories now? I think not. It seems that the SF police may be doing some spin-doctoring to counter any perception that the cameras ‘don’t work’. SF residents should expect more of the same over the next few weeks…

Winnipeg gets CCTV

Well, another city authority is apparently paying no attention to the continuous stream of assessments of CCTV systems in practice. This time, it’s Winnipeg in Canada. The cheif of police is hopeful that the small 10-camera system will work and is already saying he hopes it will be extended… before we know whether it will or won’t work. As usual the story is nothing but boosterism and contains no contrary view at all. I can predict a stream of (police) anecdotes about crimes ‘solved’ by the cameras for a few months and how much safer the town is, and then a couple of years down the line, a report showing that nothing much has changed in reality…

New Report on CCTV

Another new report shows that CCTV is not quite as effective as its advocates claim. The CITRIS report on the 4-year old, 70-camera, system in San Francisco, written by Jennifer King, Professor Deirdre Mulligan and Professor Steven Raphael shows that although there was a 20% reduction in crime against property crime in the areas covered by the cameras, crime against the person (robbery, mugging, assault, rape etc.) remained unaffected. This just adds the findings of many studies in the United Kingdom that show the same lack of preventative power from video surveillance.