Sussex CCTV scuppered by street lights (From The Argus)
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Sussex CCTV scuppered by street lights
4:10pm Monday 22nd February 2010 in
By Chie Elliott and Rebecca Evans
CCTV cameras in Sussex are being hampered by street lights, The Argus can reveal.
Glare from lamps is causing such poor picture quality that individuals filmed committing a crime cannot be identified.
Despite admitting that street lighting can have a negative effect on crucial footage, police officers insist CCTV is still an "effective tool."
MPs have now written to the force demanding an explanation.
The glitch came to light after three yobs filmed vandalising a shop could not be identified because of "glare" from street lamps.
The vandals caused more than £1,000 damage to Balloonatics, in High Street, Newhaven, on December 21.
Although the yobs were recorded smashing the shop window by a camera opposite, Sussex Police were unable to identify them.
Owner Stephen Berry, 52, said: “The council has been paying for years for these cameras, and when it actually comes to any use, they prove to be of no use whatsoever.
“The picture quality was not up to the job. The high-street lights were blurring the image.
“At the end of the day you would like to see the vandals brought to book over this issue - to at least be prosecuted. It is very frustrating.”
Sussex Police monitor about 400 council-owned CCTV cameras in the county from digital monitoring centres in Brighton and Haywards Heath.
The news has led to fears that serious crimes across the county will not be recorded because of the same lighting issue.
Chief Inspector Roger Fox, Sussex Police CCTV manager, said: “There are many factors that can impact on the effectiveness of CCTV and the proximity of street lighting can be both a positive and negative feature.
“The cameras on our Sussex Streets belong to the local councils, and therefore, their placement and that of the street lights are, ultimately, a local authority matter. However, we do work in close partnership with our colleagues in councils to try and ensure that the cameras are placed in the most appropriate locations. Their locations are subject of review.
“CCTV in Sussex is an effective tool for tackling crime and anti social behaviour.”
In Sussex last year 23,000 incidents were recorded on CCTV, with more than 600 offenders being detained directly as a result of CCTV use, with a further 1,400 arrests being monitored.
Comments(16)
Big Nasty
says...
6:18pm Mon 22 Feb 10
bibble
says...
6:48pm Mon 22 Feb 10
.
Is Sussex in some way special? Last year it was reported that less than one crime per 1,000 CCTV cameras is solved in London.
grev
says...
8:53pm Mon 22 Feb 10
Rastus Watermelon
says...
9:11pm Mon 22 Feb 10
Big Nasty
says...
10:06pm Mon 22 Feb 10
Rastus Watermelon wrote:They can be seen at night with the street lights on on ALL of the systems my company installs!, most decent quality cameras will cope with this type of lighting, I think it's just that some of the cameras are so old they need updating, or they were of inferior quality to start with!.
Well done Argus for letting everyone know they can't be recognised on these cameras if the street lights are on!
ajpj
says...
10:38pm Mon 22 Feb 10
D Merrett
says...
9:29am Tue 23 Feb 10
Brigadier Monty
says...
12:38pm Tue 23 Feb 10
Granny
says...
1:58pm Tue 23 Feb 10
mintyboy
says...
2:09pm Tue 23 Feb 10
why dont you print a list of people who are on holiday and the house is empty
or report on what time the local shop keeper take the money down the bank.
Old Ladys Gin
says...
3:03pm Tue 23 Feb 10
C = communities
T = through
V = video surveillance
I say good and good riddance to them. Having the things allows someone else 'them' to take control, when in fact it should be everyone one of us jointly. Not one of us abdicating our responsibility to make our areas more safe.
Gaz the great
says...
5:09pm Tue 23 Feb 10
Granny wrote:Not one comment on here was blaming the police, more the companies which installed them. Never did think they were any good though!
The police are being blamed for a lot of things these days but putting the blame on them for glaring street lighting and sub standard cctv is surely going a bit too far. I expect bibble will disagree with this comment.
m.
says...
6:26pm Fri 26 Feb 10
matlock
says...
5:00pm Sat 27 Feb 10
m.
says...
7:31pm Sat 27 Feb 10
matlock wrote:I havent seen the footage,But yes you are right.I assumed that the footage was from when the camera was on it's presets.Even so,the cameras do need upgrading.
I own a CCTV installation company, and the police showed me the footage in question. The problem was not the street-lighting, but that fact that the camera was zoomed out at the time, so the offenders occupied approximately 10% of the height of the image. The Home Office ROTAKIN standards for CCTV state that if a person occupies not less than 10% of the height of the image, the scene is only suitable for 'detection', ie, detecting that an incident is occurring. To be able to 'recognise a known person', the person must occupy 50% and to 'identify an unknown person', they must occupy 120%. Had the operator zoomed-in, the street lights would not have been a problem, and would have helped. The real issue here was that the camera operator failed to observe an incident in progress and hence did not zoom the camera in to a level that enabled identification of offenders.
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Gaz the great says...
6:07pm Mon 22 Feb 10