CCTV

[DamnSaxon]

Also, a previous poster refers to "transactions" taking place on the street. IMHO, CCTV won't stop this sort of thing taking place.....it'll merely displace it.

That certainly happened where I am in Nottingham. I live a couple of streets off a fairly major road, which unfortunately was equipped with CCTV a few years ago. This area being the red light and drug area, a lot of the "transactions" moved round the corner, and enough of it moved into our yard to make it now a seriously unpleasant place. (In the summer - don't know where they go in this weather.)

 

We now get heated arguments about drugs (usually hard) wafting in from our yard, slippery rubber ... detritus and needles left around the place, all sorts. I went to put my rubbish in the bin a few months ago and there was a girl I'd never seen before sitting by our bins and shooting up. She hardly seemed aware of a mere resident of the place, and I was too nonplussed to do more than ask her politely not to use our yard. Maybe I'm just oversensitive, but one does notice this kind of thing.

 

And I still have an absolute moral objection to anyone presuming to video record, store and analyse my innocent doings without my permission. For which "they" have never asked, and which I shall never give. The marginal - at best - crime reduction claimed by proponents of CCTV is (IMHO, of course ) a totally inadequate exchange for the basic liberty to walk down the street without the state breathing down your neck wherever you go.

[trout]

Firstly - apologies TeeAyBee! I managed to screw up your post .. was trying to take quote!! doh!

 

I do think that CCTV is a good idea and I believe in the effectiveness of the solution, however, I also think that if we remove the need for the system we'll be happier all round. And in the end healthier.

 

I'd held my tongue/keyboard prior with you rlast post as I didn't clearly see your take on the "absolute" effectiveness of CCTV in the reduction of crime.

 

Perhaps if I could direct you to the first five pages of this thread where "The Man" (who very sadly cannot be with us today) and I had cause to converse on the finer points of CCTV. A particular post you may wish to view - dis een here - where reference to non-political party affiliated and independant sources are shown that don't tie with the "standard" contemporary rhetoric spouted presently within the media etc. etc.

[MJ]

This kind of fits in to this topic

 

For those of you who know the Spital in Aberdeen (Red Lion, Khyber Pass on your way to/from AU) has the CCTV situated outside the mosque made you feel safer? It's reason for being set up there was for the safety of the mosque after the July bombings back in '95. Standing on the street corner it totally sticks out, I find it extremely uncomfortable. Sometimes you wonder exactly what it's actually watching for. It's amazing how the appearance of the camera has made relations in the area more difficult, an assumed guilt from something that was put up for the building's 'protection.'

I've had it suggested it would help with the muggings, none of the students I've spoken to feel safer on their way back to halls knowing there is now CCTV on the shortest route home. If a junkie's after a soft target they'll do it anyway.

[max]

With regard to the students you discuss MJ and the fact that they don't feel any safer, I can see why this might be the case. Recently a family member was attacked "doon sooth" (broken jaw - requiring a plate and screws), without any provocation, in full view of cctv cameras. In spite of clear pictures the perpetrator has his hoodie up and identification was impossible!

 

As an aside, we heard Bob Kerr on the radio last night discussing the "Midnight Football" and how the last session saw a large number of kids taking part in the 5 aside sessions at the Clickimin. One of the "problems" on da street seems to be drunken behaviour by young bairns, so projects such as the one Bob is running is one way, I feel, the £200,000 allocated to the cctv systems could be used instead.

[KOYAANISQATSI]

'Breaker on the side'

squeeky clean poop tube

Good one

keep em comin guys.

[JohanofNess]

As an aside, we heard Bob Kerr on the radio last night discussing the "Midnight Football" and how the last session saw a large number of kids taking part in the 5 aside sessions at the Clickimin. One of the "problems" on da street seems to be drunken behaviour by young bairns, so projects such as the one Bob is running is one way, I feel, the £200,000 allocated to the cctv systems could be used instead.

 

I'm not against CCTV unless it's pointing in your window I can't see the problem. I do agree that £200k might be better spent trying to get the people who cause the trouble in the first place out of the areas that need the CCTV by spending it on projects for them.

 

Unfortunately Shetland like a lot of other places in Britain has a problem with underage drinking but the way to handle that isn't by filming them getting pished its by making them realise there are better things to do with their time than firing booze down their throats. Or they could spend £200k on a big paddy wagon that takes all the underagers off the street and back home for the parents to deal with.

[trout]

SOME of Scotland's most crime-ridden areas have seen a massive reduction in offences following the return of bobbies on the beat.

 

In some areas, crime rates have fallen by a fifth since old-fashioned street patrols were introduced, The Scotsman can reveal.

 

Bringing back regular foot patrols by uniformed officers who know the area and the people – a method not used in Edinburgh since the early 1990s – has produced one of the Lothian and Borders force's biggest success stories, and further fuelled the debate over front-line policing in Scotland.

 

Read rest of article here: Bobbies on the beat DO cut crime

 

Community policing is proving far more effective in fighting crime within Scotland's capital as the CCTV vans and cameras have ever done. It's gives a massive leap of comfort to those law-abiding citizens living in the community too rather than the faceless clinical feeling your receive from the "spy in the sky"!!

[sheepshagger]

I am at a loss to understand the objections from supposedly law abbiding folks.

of course it would be better for there to be more bobbies on the beat, or would it?

In a place as small as shetland it is unlikely that a person will not be recognised when caught on cctv. It might not prevent the crime being commited but it will help put the guilty where they belong when it gets to court.

[Ghostrider]

^^ It will mean that folk who are doing relatively harmless, but technically illegal things, like having a pish down a drain grating becasue the pish hoose is keyed up, or finishing off a can as they walk along at 3am, will be hauled in for it. Simply because they are recognisable, and the folk running the system need as many names as they can get to "prove" it works and show how "effective" it is. Net benefit to the general public from such, minimal to zero.

 

Meanwhile, the quite small number of real trouble makers and folk doing stuff that needs stopping, will simply move it two steps sideways up/down a closs and get on with it. Or purposely disguise themselves so as to be difficult to recognise, and carry on as before.

 

If the cameras were in addition to existing Police patrols, preferably if they were also accompanied by additional Police patrols I might just give them the benefit of the doubt to begin with. However I suspect they will do nothing else but replace the existing patrols, the boys in blue sitting sipping coffee and sheeksin in a nice warm office on the Hillhead, until someone notices something on a screen that they figure they probably best turn out and check out. Which of course by the time they get there is all over, and the chances of I.D'ing the guilty and/or sussing exactly what happened an uphill task.

[Styles]

^^^^^^

I agree with you Ghostrider

[Evil Inky]

In a place as small as shetland it is unlikely that a person will not be recognised when caught on cctv.

Unless that person is wearing a bandanna or ski mask, of course.

[sheepshagger]

Unless that person is wearing a bandanna or ski mask, of course.

 

I know someone who was recognised by their trainers so unless the neds get rid of the bandanna or ski mask being in possesion of the said disguise along with computerised recognition software means they will be screwed.

 

It will mean that folk who are doing relatively harmless, but technically illegal things, like having a pish down a drain grating becasue the pish hoose is keyed up, or finishing off a can as they walk along at 3am,

 

unless you expose yourself while taking a pish fight it in court you have to be witnessed by the public to be done with pishing in public,

no drinking outside in the town is a stupid law thought up by idiots and enforced by morons complain about that not the cameras

[JustMe]

One thing comes to my mind about these cameras. Will they be used to prosecute people who are driving on the Street during the pedestrian zone hours unless they qualify for exemption. Seems to me that every time I am on the Street there are vehicles there that should not be there. My attitude is that the law needs to be enforced or scrapped.......much the way I feel about the drinking in public places law. It is something that has to be applied to all or it should be scrapped.........and going by the empty bottles I have seen in some of the quieter lanes it maybe should be scrapped.

[Ghostrider]

It will mean that folk who are doing relatively harmless, but technically illegal things, like having a pish down a drain grating becasue the pish hoose is keyed up, or finishing off a can as they walk along at 3am,

 

unless you expose yourself while taking a pish fight it in court you have to be witnessed by the public to be done with pishing in public,

no drinking outside in the town is a stupid law thought up by idiots and enforced by morons complain about that not the cameras

 

Kinda difficult not to expose yourself in some manner taking a pish. Besides won't the "volunteers" (aka. current curtain-twitchers gone legit) manning the Monitors count as "the public".

 

Thankfully I am no lawyer, but I don't know if I agree with that someone has to be exposing themselves to be done anyway. The "offence" when reported in the paper is "Urinating in a public place" is it not? Or is that just the paper's lax reporting style?

 

I agree, the no drinking in public law is a damn fool one, and a pointless one, but it's there, and unless and until a concentrated effort is put forth to remove it, we have to tolerate it and the fall out from it. And it will be contraventions of the likes of it, and similar low key laws like someone fooling around and smashing a bottle or couping a bin that gets hauled in, simply because they're a walk in the park for the boys in blue, and all add up in names of charge sheets.

 

CCTV has been grumbling away in the background for decades as far as the street has been concerned, it's a long time ago since I can recall it first being put forward. Yet, I would venture that had it come 10 or 15 years ago instead of now, that the difference to the really serious assaults of the recent past would have only been minimal.

 

Granted one or two of what appear to have been "opportunist" scuffles might have been discouraged, but the really serious stuff which ended in life threatening injuries had many hallmarks of something that had been pre-planned to some degree and was going to happen. In other words, the victim had in some way managed to piss off his attackers enough that they were going to get him at all costs, the street was the convenient location as it was, but had the cameras already been there, the location would simply have moved elsewhere.

 

Deterrent value is fine and well, but it has the opposite effect too when you are dealing with folk who are not going to be deterred at any cost. The argument has been put up nationally on more than one occasion against tougher sentences, in that if someone realises the chance they will be caught is high, but consider the time they'll do is worth paying just to be able to commit whatever it is in the first place, they have a bad habit of making sure they do do a thorough job just so in case they are caught, they will be getting their full money's worth, so to speak. Translated in to a local situation, that equates those victims of the recent past who next woke up in a bed in ICU, simply because their attackers knew fine well that there was little chance of being caught, and they could go for Round 2 if needs be, very possibly waking on a Mortuary slab, simply because their attacker was of the mind that they were probably going to have to do time for this, so they sure as hell were going to make sure they did enough.

[sheepshagger]

It will mean that folk who are doing relatively harmless, but technically illegal things, like having a pish down a drain grating becasue the pish hoose is keyed up, or finishing off a can as they walk along at 3am, will be hauled in for it.

 

I agree with your sentement GR but surely that has more to do with analy retentive councilors and jobs worth plods.

 

there was no need to ban drinking in public plenty of laws already on the books to deal with troublemakers but then troublemakers are not so easy to arrest, pishing up a lane hardly the crime of the century but loads of folk get a record all the same, as it is a local by-law try naming the council as a co-defendant as they are the ones that lock the toilets.

 

Unless that person is wearing a bandanna or ski mask, of course.

 

I know someone who was recognised by their trainers so unless the ned ditches the ski mask, if they are found with it they have to explain where they got it, this along with computer recognition technology should be able to get even the cleverest of dumbf**ks that commit offences on the street