CCTV and Cameras
January 3, 2010 9:20 PM
By David Chappell in Bury Free Press
By David Chappell in Bury Free Press
I read with interest the report on CCTV's in West Suffolk.
While the report was factual in its reporting it failed to look at the results, or the costs to residents and businesses.
In St Edmundsbury Borough Council area the Council have spent over £440,000 on these CCTV's camera's which have resulted in 44 arrests and only 19 cautions. The Council and Suffolk Police when asked have not been able to report to St Edmundsbury councillors any successful prosecutions from the use of these CCTV camera's. No fines, no anti-social behaviour orders, no community orders, no tangible benefit to the community.
If asked the Police will say that these camera's enable them to sit in their control room and see where potential problems are developing and send out officers to deal with it. But as the report points out there are only 24 cameras! I don't know how much Forest Heath spends on it's CCTV camera's but I suspect that if the budgets were combined and spent on police officers, and the officers watching them were freed up to go on the beat, their presence on the streets would be sufficient deterrent from the trouble starting in the first place, and make out streets safer for law abiding residents and young women out on the town than a reactive service that takes time to get there after a problem has already started.
After all the police know were to expect trouble, and that is where the camera's are placed anyway.
So I support the Conservative MP David Davies when he calls for a more careful look at the need for these cameras. Are they effective, and value for money? Is there a better way? Leanne's report stated that we have less CCTV camera's than the national average, but does not mention that we have far greater CCTV coverage than any other country in the world, or remind us that Suffolk has been one of the safest counties in the country for a long time!
I want to keep it that way, but I also want taxpayer's money spent in effective ways. Lib Dems would scrap the government's's white elephant of an ID scheme and replace it with 10,000 more bobbies on the beat. Deterrent policing is better than reactive policing, but reactive policing helps police forces reach targets! Has a system of central government targets put the cart in front of the horse?
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