Police Push On Poor Quality Systems

[Chorlton]

"It must be properly deployed and maintained before it can do the job it is designed for"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/taysid...ral/7773253.stm

C.

[Doktor Jon]

As the CPO said, "'I would urge all owners or managers of businesses with CCTV cameras installed to take the time to make sure that their system is fit for purpose.''

It would help enormously if they actually understood what the purpose was to begin with

Interesting story Chorlton, thanks for posting the link

[Joe Harris]

If they took part in the 'TRUSTED' campaign they would be able to acheive just that .

Drop them your website link Jon and I am sure they would soon start the recommendations.

'J

[Doktor Jon]

Drop them your website link Jon and I am sure they would soon start the recommendations.

Thanks for the suggestion TechGuy

For this rather battle weary and bruised Dok, the words brick, walls and head seem oh so strangely apposite

Some time ago I was reminded by a learned gent of a quote by a well known screen star ... "you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil has to be lead". Not sure I ever really understood the subtlety of the joke, but whenever anyone mentions improving CCTV, that's what immediately springs to mind, and I can't help but have a minor chuckle.

[Joe Harris]

Remember though Jon that as the 8418 systems become more prevelant there will be more onus on reduction of false activations (And with the legacy systems being given an extension on applications for URNs until 31/12).

If you can show the impact of your advice on reduction of false activations and more impotantly on an increase in detection rates then I am confident that they will finally start to 'get it'.

Maybe I should nip over next time I am down your way so we can see if it is something we might be interested in as a company.

'J

[MatonTE1]

Thanks for the suggestion TechGuy

For this rather battle weary and bruised Dok, the words brick, walls and head seem oh so strangely apposite

Some time ago I was reminded by a learned gent of a quote by a well known screen star ... "you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil has to be lead". Not sure I ever really understood the subtlety of the joke, but whenever anyone mentions improving CCTV, that's what immediately springs to mind, and I can't help but have a minor chuckle.

...said by the great Stan Laurel from the film Brats.

[daubs8]

It would be nice to think that the owners of all the 1000's of legacy systems out there would all want to upgrade to 8418 but it aint gonna happen!

I bet too that not one member of ACPO will ever say their officers won't attend a site if an operator says he can see a person committing a crime?!

The theory is great though!

p.s. can we have the DJ link mentioned? Ta.

[Doktor Jon]

...said by the great Stan Laurel from the film Brats.

That sounds about right

The 8418 issue is very valid, but in the great scheme of things, the vast majority of cameras currently deployed are not actually governed by this latest compliance document In a literal sense, daubs8 is correct in so far as police officers are required to review available evidence, whether it is actually compliant or not, and from that point of view, even if the deadline was extended another half dozen times, there's still going to be problems in getting all those system operators affected to fall into line.

I've always considered somewhat naively that improving (or should that be optimising) CCTV images, isn't so much about funding, but rather knowledge, and nothing I've seen thus far has convinced me otherwise. Convincing others can be somewhat .... "challenging", to put it mildly.

If you can show the impact of your advice on reduction of false activations and more impotantly on an increase in detection rates then I am confident that they will finally start to 'get it'.

It's very true TTG that demonstrating something is generally more readily acceptable to most people ( pictures worth a thousand words etc. ), but the fundamental problem in encouraging people to 'get it', is that human nature dictates that most will do whatever they can to try and avoid having to admit that they've actually got it wrong.

There is a slow but perceptible shift in thinking, such that some peeps are pushing for the difficult issues to be looked at and discussed in a more open and proactive way, but the pace of improvement is still painfully slow, and from where I'm sitting, I don't see that changing anytime soon

That said, very recent developments in the world of the National CCTV Strategy, do have the potential to move things along, provided difficult decisions are taken and some tangible funding is made available to get things moving. There are signs, but we'll just have to wait and see what actually develops over the next few months.

Not sure if this was the link you were after daubs8 ..... http://www.doktorjon.co.uk/trusted%20campaign/trusted1.html

[Map Security]

One of our Dual codec J2000 systems provided the only evidence that was used to give a successful conviction of a notorious car jacking gang in London.

The Met recently wrote to us asking what system the unit was............I followed with a telephone call and advised...He wanted to know what compression was used and when I said JPEG he replied " we thought so"......

He stated" that he wished more CCTV systems were of this standard and that 95% would fail to produce evidence of an acceptable standard". What amused me was that we used cheapo cameras on the job God know what else is out there???

I went on to ask about H264 and his response was not encouraging( by the silence). Apparently the lawyers like JPEG due to the reason that a new frame is stored everytime and that complex algorythums are not used to "assume" pixels......

This throws a real spanner in the works as I was looking at newer H264 units...I guess I'll be sticking with the dual codec's!!

[Neutech]

H264 is no use over here as not accepted in NI court of Law , try telling that to "Multis" that operate over here

Have to agree with MAP , JPEG is Fantastic for quality, its 1 downfall is the size of file storeage but at least you can see the images!

There are tons of arguments and discussions on H264 / MJPEG / MPEG4 etc but why are manuf / dist only interested in boasting that their DVR will record 3/4/5 times more than anyone elses .... this maybe the case but its a pity you cant use the images or the quality is so poor its a waste of time

Every year IFSEC amazes me when i go round the DVR's on offer and get a run through the machines that so many of them are total tat as far as playback recorded images are concerned, why do people buy them .......... its not a cost issue

my 2p's worth