CCTV failing to reduce crime claims police chief

Britain's 4.2 million CCTV cameras have failed to make a significant impact on criminality claims DCI Mick Neville. Only 3 per cent of robberies in London were solved with the help of CCTV, he says.

Mr Neville heads up the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), and was speaking at an industry conference. .  He says the use of CCTV images as evidence in court has been very poor. “Billions of pounds have been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court,” he told the conference.

The aim of the Viido unit is to improve the way that CCTV footage is processed, turning it into a third forensic specialism alongside DNA analysis and fingerprinting. Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country in Europe. But Mr Neville is reported in The Guardian as saying that more training was needed for officers who often avoided trawling through CCTV images “because it’s hard work”.

Viido had launched a series of initiatives including a new database of images that will be used to track and identify offenders using software developed for the advertising industry. This works by following distinctive brand logos on the clothing of unidentified suspects. By backtracking through images officers have often found earlier pictures of suspects where they have not been hiding their features.

Mr Neville said that Viido would be publishing pictures of suspects in mugging, rape and robbery cases on the internet from next month and building a national CCTV database that will hold images of convicted criminals and unidentified suspects.

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