So Is It Worth All The Effort And Expense After All?

[billythebellbox]

Now then guys.......

Lets not knock the police, lets put the ball back into your court.... When the industry comes up with some sort of system compatability which can be viewed by the police, the defence solicitors, the suspect and the Crown Prosecution Service then start slagging the police, CCTV is absolutely useless unless the Criminal Justice System has the tools to view it. Unless of course you know a magic bit of kit that can view all types of CCTV????

well with my stuff clients burns to dvd- then sticks a pc,

CCTV is absolutely useless unless the Criminal Justice System has the tools to view it. Unless of course you know a magic bit of kit that can view all types of CCTV????

I recall your topic on the matter, if you work for cctv "experts" who have a number of issue getting play back I would expert an in house solution to earn your fee, rather than being my fault that somebodies got dvr tat of ebay or you have no idea what machine a file is off,

[C.S TEK.]

CCTV is absolutely useless unless the Criminal Justice System has the tools to view it. Unless of course you know a magic bit of kit that can view all types of CCTV????

Isn't called a PC or VCR, thought most people owned one

[C.S TEK.]

CCTV is absolutely useless unless the Criminal Justice System has the tools to view it. Unless of course you know a magic bit of kit that can view all types of CCTV????

Isn't it called a PC or VCR, thought most people owned one

[billythebellbox]

Isn't it called a PC or VCR, thought most people owned one

so true he siad it twice

[ScorpioInstallations]

See: BBC

...more training was needed for officers who often avoided trawling through CCTV images "because it's hard work".

"Why don't people fear it? They think the cameras are not working."

head of the Viido at Scotland Yard

Arfur is completely right (apart from the back to front grading), we have 20% of the worlds cameras in the UK and we are renowned for our 's but still we have no real regulation on installation, criminals couldn't give a monkeys about cameras because poor footage due to badly positioned cameras, poor recorded footage and the fact the most police won't put the effort into seeking footage because of the hassle of obtaining the backup and the dificultys of playing it back...

[arfur mo]

and to be fair, that is so regarding veritty of playback software.

part of the 'problem' is the actually the in vention of the dvr, if you think about from the user pespective and even how we sell it even in its lowest ebay vendor form tends to be far superior to the mux/vcr combo of bygone years.

it and cheaper camera's imo has fueled the explosion of CCTV, why some might ask well simply because no tapes need changing daily, the quality is less diminished by age of the mechanism but the pro rata the available Police resouces have not matched this growth, to a point of evidence melt down/saturation and overwhelming the available handling ability.

so guys whats the 'viable' answer? - well hecked if i know short of more staff on the court and police ranks, but to help to make things a little bette, those who do deal with the data are aware they need those bits of viewing software - and ask for it.

regs

Alan

[james.wilson]

hang on arf, wasnt cctv use increased cos the police couldnt do it anymore without it... now your saying that they dont have the manpower to check cctv with KNOWN events on?

Whats next, dont call us we will call you? lol

[ilkie]

From my own experience it seems there is a reluctance to trawl though cctv footage after an event, and often this is left with the client or the service company, which I can understand. Often you need to provide a catalog of the event, with stills and video. Or we do. This obviously helps them

We also give them the footage in mpeg (plays in windows media player), relevant jpg's, and native footage.

Can I add a note of caution here.

There are significant legal risks in the enduser/installer/cctv operator reviewing a recordings searching for evidence.

Many CCTV Control Rooms, after taking legal advice are no longer allowing their CCTV operators to do this.

It to do with being trained to assess what is evidence and what is not (the fact there is no activity in a scene is evidence itself).

The responsibility for assessing the validity lies only with the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) which can only be someone who is trained in the field.

Anyone else undertaking the task risks missing the vital images to the prosecution or defence.

The procedure now adopted is to receive an instruction from the Police only to download the images from this start time to this stop time on these cameras, and provide a statement to that effect.

This leaves the onus for what is evidence only with the Police.

The Police are legally obliged to seize best evidence.

I think the relevant legislation is covered by PACE.

Ilkie

[Doktor Jon]

I await Dokotrjons reply as I beleive he has already answered this post through his 'Trusted' campaign.

The issue is not the technology - but its implementation.

'J

What can I say ...

Kind of you to mention my humble efforts TheTechGuy

It's interesting for me that a significant part of my work time is spent playing "devils advocado!", so if I may just make a few observations on what's been said so far .... but brace yourselves, this may go on a bit ( sorry!! ) ....

With regard to Jim's comment "CCTV is absolutely useless unless the Criminal Justice System has the tools to view it", it is perhaps important to remember that unless there is something worth viewing in the first place, the means by which it is actually replayed would be somewhat academic.

In the National CCTV Strategy, it was mentioned that 80% of CCTV material submitted into the Criminal Justice System was unsuitable for use as evidence, and yet the point it conveniently doesn't mention, is the 80% crepe has nothing to do with the significantly larger percentage of incidents that are not actually captured on the CCTV, for a whole variety of reasons; in other words, the situation in the real world is much much worse than the media would have us believe.

Now short of writing a book on the basis of this thread, there are certain obvious points which need to be considered.

As has been mentioned in another current thread, most end users have little detailed insight into the application of CCTV, and so any attempt to procure an 'appropriate' system for their needs, is invariably a more miss than hit event. The industry as a whole needs to better educate their clients, and that doesn't mean telling them that the latest "state of the art" bit of kit is going to solve all their problems, but rather adopting a more unified and honest approach to simplifying the problem solving part of the equation. End users generally don't have a proper understanding of what they need to address their requirements, and most struggle to identify what they want.

Consultants do what consultants do, and it pains me to say that I wish many of them would do it a good deal better. There are some good ones out there, but unfortunately they are very much in a minority.

Distributors have a vital role to play, but with the best will in the world, I can't think of any off hand that consistantly demonstrate they want to go the extra mile in helping to improve the broader status (and technical competency) of the industry.

Manufacturers have a huge part to fill, and perhaps the recent announcement that Axis, Bosch and Sony will be establishing a forum to develop future standardised compatibility for their network products, does suggest that there is a will now to address technical issues, simply because apart from operational considerations, it also makes sound commercial sense.

Now you don't need me to elaborate on some of the issues that affect the installer side of the business. I have mentioned before that there is a world of difference between installing CCTV as a profession, and actually installing it professionally.

Getting it right is a complicated business, and too often those who are best placed to provide a sound technical solution, are overlooked in favour of either technically challenged or else cost and quality cutting competitors, which is a sad but understandable consequence of a business almost completely lacking in standards.

I've tried to do my little bit to lay a basis for bringing up quality and effectiveness, but unfortunately it's not something I can simply do on my own. If it tells you anything at all, it's probably fair to say I've had even more genuine interest from overseas than I have here in the U.K.

There's a lot of work for me still to do on developing the 'TRUSTED' project, but as I'm not being funded I have to try and fit the work in between all the other stuff that fills up an average day, and as an average day for me is around 18 hours, it really doesn't get any easier.

I should perhaps mention that in terms of how the police deal with recovering evidential recordings, the first thing to understand is that if a country for whatever reason decides to install millions of surveillance cameras, you have to consider how many staff are going to be required to locate and extract the exact volume of data that's required for that investigation.

In all but the most serious cases, there just aren't enough police or civilian staff available to deal with it. The general perception amongst many officers appears to be disillusionment with both the quality and ease with which evidential recordings should be obtained. More often than not, the systems don't work for them, so they can perhaps be forgiven for being somewhat sceptical when it comes to recovering material.

In terms of the National CCTV Strategy, the Metropolitan Police Viido unit, the UK's constabulary's, and wider discussions within the Criminal Justice System, things are going to change, and although it won't happen overnight, within the next couple of years we should start to see some appreciable movement towards raising standards across the board, from camera deployment, to evidence being submitted into court; it will get better, simply because it has to .... things cannot remain as they are.

Personally, I'd like to think that if everyone on this forum did just a little bit to try and improve the general situation, then at least that would be a start. Whether voluntarily or by other means, we will all probably be working in a more structured way in the not too distant future, although for quite understandable reasons, it isn't going to go down well with everyone.

Sorry for going on a bit, but as therapy goes, it seems to be working for me!!!

[james.wilson]

Doktor i dont think you go on at all, i find all your posts very interesting... they need to be mind lol

James