Area : SNETNEWS

Date : Thu Jun 20, 10:02                                                       
From : Donna J. Logan                                        1:330/201.1
To   : All                                 
Subj : UK Cam Cops (fwd)                                                     
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Reply-to: snetnews@alterzone.com
From: "Donna J. Logan" 
Originally to: snetnews@alterzone.com,
Sender: snetnews-approval@alterzone.com
Original Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 09:12:56 -0400 (EDT)


->  SearchNet's   snetnews   Mailing List


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 21:44:55 -0700 (PDT)
To: Recipients of pol-abuse 
Subject: UK Cam Cops

Posted:  Michael Novick 

 Public Cameras Change Crime Picture in Britain 

Friday, June 14, 1996
L.A. TIMES
By  WILLIAM D. MONTALBANO, Times Staff Writer   

In a country where good cops have often been quirky, Sherlock Holmes to
Inspector Morse, some of the best detectives nowadays stand on
poles and never blink.  Telemetry, my dear Watson.
     
Crime in Newcastle is etched in black and white at the flick
of a joystick.  This rough-hewn, hard-drinking city is improbably
taking a leading role in a nationwide love affair with anti-crime
street surveillance cameras.
     
"We are leading the world in closed-circuit television
technology and its use," said John Stevens, police chief of the
Northumbria region here in northern England.
       
In a month of especially heavy European tourism in
Britain, including up to 300,000 partisan and potentially unruly
sports fans, sharp-eyed Newcastle is being held up as a
continental model--and a warning.      

Big Bobby is watching, mate.

What's more, in a country where people are by tradition reserved
and exhibit ingrained respect for one another's privacy, most seem
content to be in the picture.
     
There is nothing secret about Newcastle's candid cameras.
Everyone knows where they are, atop buildings and vandal-proof
masts on busy streets.  But some people forget.
     
In less than five years, Constable Lens has fingered 1,500
crooks in downtown Newcastle.  Confronted with taped evidence, all
but seven pleaded guilty.  Those seven were convicted, according to
Peter Durham, the precinct commander in downtown Newcastle.     

In the United States, Baltimore only recently became the first
major city to begin experimenting with downtown TV, but in Britain
the cameras are widely accepted in modern crime fighting.  They
cannot replace police patrols, but they can be invaluable silent
partners, Newcastle officers say.
     
Since they were first tested in Birmingham as the decade
began, urban cameras have spread to several thousand cities and
towns, typically paid for by local governments and anti-crime
groups, according to Karen Hart of the government's Crime
Protection Agency.
     
Government reports cite the cameras as a major reason for
falling crime figures:  In the small town of Berwick, burglaries
fell 69% after four cameras were installed.  Glasgow, Scotland,
reported a 68% drop in crime.  In Northampton, it was 57%.  Now
business people on Oxford Street, one of London's busiest
shopping areas, are saying they plan a camera system aimed at
curbing street crime and shoplifting.
     
As in the United States, private closed-circuit camera systems
are well-known features of British office, parking, shopping and
residential complexes, transportation systems and sports stadiums.
But it is the great day-and-night concentration of pedestrians in
the heart of Britain's cities that makes the cameras so attractive
to authorities.  The apparatuses have a powerful calming effect on
people worried about crime.      

"We had 50 public meetings about putting cameras into a residential area 
for the first time without a single objection.  We got complaints, 
though, from residents who were not getting cameras," said Eric Mock, the 
precinct commander in Newcastle West.
     
Other European countries are studying the British successes,
but what alarms some analysts is that while the technology is
cutting edge, rules for its use are scant.
     
There are no national standards; each agency derives its own
code of conduct about what it will film and what it will act upon.
An assault?  Sure.  But a shoving match among teenagers?  Street
solicitation for sex?  Some amicably rowdy drunks?
     
"There is no statutory regulation of private security, just
as there is no legal enforceability of the right to privacy," said
criminologist Clive Norris.  At a recent conference in
Boston, Norris said, he was surprised by the relative lack of
interest and debate about candid cameras in public spaces in
America, where the right of privacy is recognized by statute in
only a few states.  Legal judgments about surveillance in public
places are stricter in some places than others, with Sweden,
Germany and Italy, to name a few European countries, all more
restrictive than Britain.
     
"We have laws against trespass and nuisance, but if you take
a picture of someone in a public space, the subject of the
picture has no legal right to its use.  When we say that 'An
Englishman's home is his castle,' we're defining privacy as a right
tied up with property, not civil rights," Norris said.      

Good-usage rules published by an association of local
governments urge that cameras "operate in a manner that is
sensitive to the privacy of people living and working in the area."
     
In some cities, such as London, street cameras are owned and
operated privately.  "Civilian operators will phone us if they see
something, and they may put the picture on a monitor in the
station," said Alex Sutherland, a crime prevention officer for the
Metropolitan police.  Only then do police decide whether to react.
     
Atiya Lockwood, spokeswoman for the National Council for Civil
Liberties, says it is time to control the cameras:
Surveillance film from private companies has found its way into
cheap-thrills videos: elevator sex, parking lot punch-ups.
Recently, a camera operator in a small Welsh town pleaded guilty
to making obscene phone calls to women picked up on his cameras.
     
Supporters, who far outnumber the detractors, say lenses are
not peering through bedroom windows.
     
"There is, of course, Big Brother concerns, but the argument
is that if people are doing something legal they have nothing to
fear from cameras.  The job of the cameras is to identify people
who are doing something wrong," said Claire Sumner, a spokeswoman
for the Home Office.      

The British government began providing money for the cameras in its 
1994-95 budget.  Now, nearly 800 local governments are competing for $22 
million in matching government funds for cameras.  An additional $44 
million is promised over the next two years.
     
Newcastle police think their new surveillance system in the
tough West End neighborhood may be the first in the world
specifically designed to patrol a large residential neighborhood.
     
It went online last fall following the success of a
16-camera, bought-with-donations downtown system launched in
December 1992.      

About 1.5 million people live in the Northumbria region, and Newcastle is 
party central for northeastern England.  The city's downtown is the 
commercial, intellectual, athletic and liquid heart of the city.      

In addition to the best shops and biggest businesses, there are two
universities, a major league soccer stadium and 152 pubs
downtown--82 of them in one 400-yard-square patch called the Bigg
Market.
     
Weekend hilarity often spills into the streets, and in 1991
downtown Newcastle recorded 13,500 crimes.  At the end of 1993,
after a full year of cameras, crimes had fallen to 9,000.
     
"Crime figures were down another 25% in the first quarter of
this year.  That means the overall rate has been about halved since
1991," said Chief Inspector Dave Hand.  "Cameras are not the answer
to everything, but they have become a key part of a coordinated strategy 
to fight crime."      

Last month, about 1,000 frustrated Newcastle soccer fans rampaged through 
downtown streets.  Police jailed about 50 hooligans that night, but the 
cameras saw many more candidates for what is dryly termed
"retrospective arrest."
     
Detectives spent weeks studying reels of black-and-white
footage taken from surveillance cameras.  In all, they picked out
152 faces, arresting 19 of them in dawn raids.  Then they gave
surveillance camera pictures of 80 others to a local newspaper.
Within a couple of days all had been identified, including a number
who gave themselves up.
     
Last week, borrowing the example, Scotland Yard distributed
the pictures of six soccer fans filmed during violence in London
in April.  The fear is that ruffians will try to disrupt the ongoing
Euro '96 soccer championships this month, which will bring 1.3
million fans to the largest sporting event in Britain in 30 years.
     
In September, a camera system came to the blue-collar West
End, where 26% of the men have criminal records and 40% of men
between 16 and 24 are unemployed.  They've helped in more than 300
arrests, but they have real limits, said Deputy Precinct
Commander Joe Hewison.
     
"It's like giving somebody a pair of binoculars and telling
him to stand on a high building.  He needs to know where to look
and why to look.  Without good information, cameras are just pie in
the sky," he said.      

The latest wrinkle on Newcastle's technological frontier is a portable 
set of cameras that can be moved around as circumstance demands.  They are 
one solution to what police call displacement:  Criminals who know they 
may be on candid cameras seek corners without them.
 
Posted in pol-abuse@igc.apc.org
To subscribe, send this message: subscribe pol-abuse
To this address: majordomo@igc.apc.org


-> Send "subscribe   snetnews " to majordomo@alterzone.com
->  Posted by: "Donna J. Logan" 


--- MailGate 0.25e
 * Origin: XBN BBS - SearchNet HeadQuarters (1:330/201.1)