Police have revealed the crucial role of business and technology in the fight against crime.

CCTV system i-Witness, created by BT’s data and surveillance division, monitored more than 41,000 incidents in Sussex during the past year.

The system contributed to arrests in more than 500 incidents.

Police resources were spared in more than 370 cases because live footage showed an incident had been resolved and there was no need for a police officer.

The i-Witness network, image storage and retrieval technology gives Sussex Police stations access to CCTV evidence from the 419 cameras installed around the county.

The technology boasts 450 terrabytes of storage – enough to store 100,000 DVDs or 725,850 music CDs.

Julian Butcher, BT Redcare’s delivery manager, said: “BT Redcare has deployed 50 i-Witness terminals in the offices of Sussex police and local authorities, which allow CCTV controllers to monitor 30 towns and villages, including Brighton, Hove, Lewes, Eastbourne, Hastings, Bognor Regis, Chichester and Crawley, via a fully managed BT network. Good quality CCTV evidence is persuasive and showing suspects video evidence early in the process can often encourage early guilty pleas.”

Chief Inspector of Sussex Police Stephen Brookman said: “We’ve increased the bandwidth of the system to 1,000 megabytes now, so we can deliver more data across the network.

“We’ve also upgraded it so it can receive images from any camera on the market. BT has been an excellent partner to us and has provided us with a reliable and consistent service over the years.

“I look forward to working with them in the future.”

Public space surveillance CCTV in Sussex is operated by the police and East and West Sussex and Brighton and Hove City Councils.

Local authorities have ownership and are responsible for cameras on the streets, while Sussex Police owns, maintains and operates the county’s CCTV monitoring centres.

Redcare is a market-leading specialist in secure, monitored communications services, giving customers automated, intelligent decisions and responses.