No fan of CCTV myself I have to say Thanet councils announcement that they will be cutting by a quarter the time these things are monitored is a master stroke, instead of Thanet's crooks, low life & scum, having to guess when someone's watching, TDC have let it be known that the cameras will be unattended at...... no doubt a press release will be issued later.
As much as I believe in open government you would have thought that they could have at least kept the rascals guessing.
The council spokesperson said on BBC radio breakfast that staff would be redeployed which is a bit of a puzzle if this is about saving money.
ReplyDeleteAs you pointed out Tony this is just crazy letting all and sundry know when monitoring is absent. Far better a random system. But then the council has lost senior staff and those now making the decisions are bound to be error prone.
If money saving is the issue then at a stroke I can save TDC a third of their CCTV monitoring budget. Stop monitoring the Mill Lane car park. As we found out in August this one car park has 32 cameras out of total of 90 in Thanet and only another 23 in Margate They can always look at the images offline if a crime is reported.
God save the Queen.
My understanding is that the information was not released by the council, which in fact had to respond to the news this morning. After all, common sense would dictate that it's not the kind of news that one shares with the public for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the cameras are still recording but during those hours, very little crime indeed, statistically, takes place and at a time of tight resources, having a full-time person staring at the screens, is not considered a cost-effective means of stretching the community safety budget. The evidence however is available for recovery, if an incident should take place.
You see, Tony, it was a cunning plan all along to lure the unsuspecting villains out when they thought they could not be seen. Big brother is alive and kicking.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, TDC has found a way of recognising hoodies in the dark from video footage. I thought that CCTV was meant to be a deterrent because back up could be summonsed to attend an incident.
ReplyDeleteWhats wrong with TDC going back on their ill conceived plan and use random monitoring?
The crime rate in Thanet is rising. Over 600 reported crimes in the area in jul and aug. Up from 500 in the months before. So with Police cuts and this free period for crime its going to go in one direction only. Not what law abiding residents want to hear. Even 8% of crimes in the 6 hours in question is rather a lot.
ReplyDeleteWell you would expect loads of CCTV in mill lane car park thats the tdc workers free carpark, you wouldn't want all those cars paid for by your council tax vandalised would you.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the chief exec would like to contribute all her "working at homes days" salary to the budget, that would probably save £50K
Cutting monitoring from 3am to 9am is a 25% cut in monitoring time, so I wonder how much management has been cut by, to reflect the reduction in work relating to reduced front line monitoring staff.
ReplyDeleteFollowing on from 11:27 perhaps the travel cost savings made by staff working from home could be contibuted by them to the savings at least. They must already gain a lot of extra leisure time as they don't have to spend time travelling to work.