To receive evidence from the Police Service and the Council’s Anti Social Behaviour Team on their use of CCTV systems.
Minutes:
Mr Kibblewhite answered questions regarding the operation of the covert CCTV van that operated within the Borough. The rationale behind its purchase had been to provide public reassurance and reduce crime and anti social behaviour. The van was primarily to deter disorder and robbery. Examples of where it had been deployed were outside schools, in Finsbury Park and outside Tottenham Hotspur football ground. It was a very effective deterrent and could cause potentially troublesome groups of people to disperse quickly. It also helped to detect crimes in certain instances. For example, it had helped to catch some young people who had undertaken a robbery on a bus and assisted in identifying individuals involved in an assault on a bar manager. There had not been any prosecutions that had relied solely on evidence collected in this way but it had been a contributory factor in many cases.
When the van was bought, the intention was for it to be used 24 hours per day but, in practice, 6 hours a day had proven to be more achievable. It was generally used at peak times – early evenings and weekends. The van had been bought by the Safer Communities Partnership but it had been used almost entirely by the Police. It could be booked by other partners but the Police had priority use and bookings could not be guaranteed as they might need to use it at short notice. There had been some initial teething technical problems and on some occasions they had not been able to record activity
The van had cost £75000 to purchase and £25000 to maintain over a 5 year period. This worked out as being cheaper then the cost of one PC. It was used sometimes as a replacement for manpower when action was urgently needed. The unit was popular with law abiding people who felt reassured by its presence and could help to calm down volatile situations
He felt that the Police could be more forceful in its use. It could also be used more regularly. Its use was particularly good at deterring disorder outside schools. He also felt that the fixed cameras did not always provide good quality pictures when “zoomed in” on targets.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Clues explained the role of the Police Video Sentry system. Mr. Jones stated that when he had come to Haringey, he had found the images that the Police had been getting via CCTV cameras were of poor quality. He had started the new system up by placing two cameras in a store room in Bruce Grove. They worked off a narrow beam and were very useful at placing people at a location at a particular time. Half of the funding for this had come from the Council. There were now 130 cameras in operation throughout the Borough and these had been installed during the past 5 years. They were located in shops, offices and storerooms and covered a range of locations including cash points and road junctions. In areas where it was operational, there was an 80% chance of an offender being caught on a camera walking to or from an incident. There were approximately 50 in Wood Green and 60 in Tottenham. The cameras were now being extended to Crouch End and Muswell Hill. Evidence collected by the cameras had been used to identify and successfully prosecute over 600 offenders during the past 5 years. These were often serious offences such as robbery, assault, rape and murder. This had coincided with a 50% reduction in street crime in these areas.
Posters with images of individuals who had been caught committing offences on the system were regularly displayed on Arriva buses in order to encourage people to help in their identification. It also helped to deter individuals from committing offences.
The overall cost of the system had been £400,000 in total. The Council had contributed £180,000 of this. The cost of the equipment was coming down in price – the local authority had now spent £50,000 on obtaining 100 more cameras for the west of the Borough where there had been concern about the effectiveness of CCTV coverage.
The system allowed photos of offenders to be obtained and circulated very fast, thus enabling quicker arrests. In addition, the improved evidence that the images provided now meant that it was rare to have a not guilty plea - 95% of offenders were now pleading guilty. This was enabling large savings to be made in court costs, which could be £10,000 per day. The system had some limitations – it was not monitored and therefore ineffective in enabling a response to an incident and images were also not centrally recorded. It was nevertheless cheap and, if someone committed an offence where the cameras were in operation, there was an 80% chance of being able to positively place them as being in the location. Identification was always an issue but there was a 50% rate of identification on publicised images.
Officers that worked with video sentry visited the CCTV control room from time to time and used images gathered by the fixed cameras. Police officers had worked with operators to encourage the active patrolling of locations. There were some gaps in the capability of the fixed CCTV system at the moment and, in common with other fixed systems, is was rare for the Police to obtain images that were of sufficient quality to be used. Images could be too wide and individuals too small and therefore difficult to identify.
It was noted that the control room was soon to be relocated to new premises with a new digital system. Tapes were currently collected once per week. The new system would benefit from being networked into the video sentry system so that images could be shared with the Police. If this was not done, there was a danger that the service would be inundated with requests for images.
There were currently two types of staff working within the CCTV control room. The parking staff appeared to be particularly well trained and effective. They had one pool of people who were rotated and had shown themselves to be very efective in enforcement. There was a high turnover amongst staff operating the community safety cameras staff and many came from temporary agencies. It was challenging work and particularly difficult to sustain concentration over a period of time.
It was noted the there were now Sentry Scope cameras within the Borough that could provide a 20 mega pixel image which could be zoomed in to pick out particular parts of the image in order to identify a suspect or a car registration. One side effect of the cameras had been that a high percentage – up to 40% - of robbery allegations – had been shown to be bogus.
The vast majority of requests for use of premises for cameras were agreed to. However, there were likely to be difficulties in finding suitable sites for cameras in Muswell Hill as many of the premises above shops were residential and residential properties were not generally used.
Mr. Bagnall reported on the use of covert CCTV equipment to address issues of anti social behaviour. He had been assisted in setting up their system by Mr. Clues. The Home Office had visited to see they system in action and had been impressed. The system was working very well and had been in operation for four months now. It was heavily used and had proven to be effective. It had been particularly helpful in closing down several brothels and gathering sufficient evidence to enable an ASBO to be obtained. It had also been used to address fly tipping and had enabled perpetrators to be identified. Drugs issues had also been identified in certain areas of the Borough. The service worked closely with partners, particularly the Police.
The main client of the service was Homes for Haringey but it covered all types on tenure. The strategy of the service was to capture ASB activity in action and use this evidence to take legal proceedings against the perpetrators. Evidence captured was also used to convince private landlords to deal with anti social behaviour emanating from their own properties, otherwise further action could be taken by the Council. The use of evidence obtained using CCTV considerably strengthened cases and often was crucial in obtaining ASBOs. The evidence obtained helped to prevent the need for residents to go to court. The cameras also saved the Council money by helping to prevent vandalism by identifying perpetrators.
The covert nature of the surveillance helped to protect witnesses. The van that belonged to the Safer Communities Partnership would not have been suitable as it was designed for overt surveillance and its main function was also to deter crime rather then to collect evidence. Two officers currently undertook surveillance duties. The van was generally used where it was felt activity was likely to take place although it was not possible to guarantee that any would take place.
All operations were logged and the van had been used 98 times over a four month period. Partners had accompanied the ASBAT when using the van on certain covert operations. Partners were not, however, able to deploy the equipment independently as it was very expensive and operators had to be properly trained in its use beforehand.
The van and all the associated equipment had cost £142,000 to buy. The software was easy to update and action was to be undertaken to double the size of the memory. The only ongoing costs associated with the system arose from staffing costs, particularly overtime and regular maintenance of the van. The service was to be marketed to Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) and it was hoped that it would ultimately become self financing.
Images captured through surveillance could be shared with partners such as the Environment Service and Homes for Haringey. ASBAT did not normally get access to images captured by other CCTV systems. However, images would need to be of good quality if they were to be of use to them. He had tried to obtain images obtain by the fixed cameras once before but had not found the process to be straightforward. Publicity on how the Borough’s CCTV systems were used, what happened to the images and how they could be accessed could assist in promoting the best use of data obtained.
The use of CCTV by the Anti Social Behaviour Team would be assisted by having a dedicated CCTV officer in post. Its use currently relied on the goodwill of staff. This had been considerable but he was concerned that staff would burn themselves out eventually if they continued working in this way.
The Panel thanked Mr. Kibblewhite, Mr. Martin, Mr. Jones, Mr. Clues and Mr. Bagnall for their assistance.