Heard lots of talk about this, read this interesting story. Wonder how well they really work?? Couldnt this ENORMOUS amount of time and money WASTED on this......


http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ved/article.do

London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today.
But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.
A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.
In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.
The figures were obtained by the Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly using the Freedom of Information Act.
Dee Doocey, the Lib-Dems' policing spokeswoman, said: "These figures suggest there is no link between a high number of CCTV cameras and a better crime clear-up rate.
"We have estimated that CCTV cameras have cost the taxpayer in the region of £200million in the last 10 years but it's not entirely clear if some of that money would not have been better spent on police officers.
"Although CCTV has its place, it is not the only solution in preventing or detecting crime.
"Too often calls for CCTV cameras come as a knee-jerk reaction. It is time we engaged in an open debate about the role of cameras in London today."
The figures show:
• There are now 10,524 CCTV cameras in 32 London boroughs funded with Home Office grants totalling about £200million.
• Hackney has the most cameras - 1,484 - and has a better-than-average clearup rate of 22.2 per cent.
• Wandsworth has 993 cameras, Tower Hamlets, 824, Greenwich, 747 and Lewisham 730, but police in all four boroughs fail to reach the average 21 per cent crime clear-up rate for London.
• By contrast, boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Sutton and Waltham Forest have fewer than 100 cameras each yet they still have clear-up rates of around 20 per cent.
• Police in Sutton have one of the highest clear-ups with 25 per cent.
• Brent police have the highest clear-up rate, with 25.9 per cent of crimes solved in 2006-07, even though the borough has only 164 cameras.
The figures appear to confirm earlier studies which have thrown doubt on the effectiveness of CCTV cameras.
A report by the criminal justice charity Nacro in 2002 concluded that the money spent on cameras would be better used on street lighting, which has been shown to cut crime by up to 20 per cent.
Scotland Yard is trying to improve its track record on the use of CCTV and has set up a special unit which collects and circulates CCTV images of criminals.
A pilot project is running in Southwark and Lambeth and is expected to be rolled out across the capital.
The figures only include state-funded cameras.
The true number, once privately run units and CCTV at rail and London Underground stations are taken into account, will be significantly higher.

Someone should be going off about "Big Brother" in 5, 4, 3, 2.....

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“Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not”

How about "Big Waster". As in, what the gov't does with our money to satisfy reactionaries with ill-thought-out plans.

As stated in the article, street lighting cuts crime 20%. That, hiring cops, and improving the 911 system should be where the money goes.

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. -George Carlin

I think its a waste so far. Forget which part of the city that has them, but they dont work because the company that is supposed to maintain them itsnt doing it.

I wish people would get to the core of problems, crime being one of them, instead of putting patches on the problem.

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be aware that what the democrats say does not mean what it reads and what We perceive as to what THEY say is or isn't, is not what THEY mean. You dig....Great!

I'd rather have a 3rd term of Bush than a black Jimmy Carter. - copyright 2008 rpost


I love how some enlightened liberals have no problem censoring those with whom they disagree.

The articles sounds like some sort of lie.

Cameras are to protect people in public or to indentify criminals acting out in public. They can't detect crimes that are done covertly, such as burglary, and the story never mentions that and stupidly assumes that all crimes can somehow be caught on camera.

I've mentioned before that cameras, which are manned by people in a remote location, are the equal of having a cop standing there watching. But, a person can easily watch four or five monitors, so you get five cops for the price of one. Meanwhile, not even live cops stand right by someone's unlocked back kitchen window ready to grab the first guy to sneak in, so they don't work well for that either.

I'm sick of reading crap like this.