Police chief admits CCTV failure

A senior police officer has admitted CCTV has failed to cut crime despite huge investment in camera systems.

Iconic images we’ve all come to know. Hasib Hussain, the fourth London bomber, winds his way through crowds on London’s Hillston Road. Less than an hour later, he would detonate his bomb on a bus here in Tavistock Square, killing 13 people. You can make out the moment the bomb explodes when passers-by run for cover. The story of the morning of 7/7 is there for us to witness thanks to the constant surveillance of CCTV. But the cameras failed to stop the bombs. And if a senior Metropolitan police officer is to be believed, they've failed to stop crime. Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville is the head of Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office, he says closed circuit television has been an utter fiasco. The statistics are hard to deny.

Take London, where just 3% of street robberies have been solved using CCTV. Chief Inspector Neville says the billions spent have been wasted because little thought was given to how the images could be used. He says CCTV is no deterrent since criminals assume cameras don’t work, and more alarming still, he says police officers often fail to consult CCTV because they think it’s too much hard work. Scotland Yard is hoping to raise convictions by putting more images on the net. But they have a long way to go before they can prove to the public the case for cameras in their towns and streets and public places.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. fiasco : n-count

If you describe an event or attempt to do something as a fiasco, you are emphasizing that it fails completely.