Does CCTV actually work or is it just a waste of money ? So asked Henry Firman of CCTV42 before exhibiting at IFSEC
It’s time to reflect on the past 12 months. The usual trips out to see manufacturers in Asia, new product development, new customers and at times pulling out of hair when things don’t go entirely to plan. The crisis in Japan has impacted the world of CCTV given it’s high dependence on Japanese components and some big names have a lot of hard work ahead of them in Q2, 3 and 4 of 2011.
We tend to get involved in smaller scale projects and limit ourselves to CCTV. We don’t sell alarm systems, fire detection systems or entry systems, just good old fashioned CCTV solutions.
Working at the scale we do allows us to involve ourselves in each customer’s wants, needs and problems. Even with installers we regularly get phone calls picking our brains as to how best a solution can be arrived at on a budget. This year there have been a number of projects which have impacted on us emotionally.
As an industry CCTV is constantly bombarded with accusations of spying on innocent people’s lives, failing to detect or solve crimes, being a waste of money and generally being a bad thing. The old favorite of one crime being solved per 1,000 cameras is dragged out and spread across the headlines every few months when news stories dry up. Then there is the “cctv footage can’t be used in court” myth which seems to have permeated through internet chat rooms and other places.
Our experience is somewhat different from those attention-grabbing headlines. Very little of our business is funded from the public purse. Our customers are paying for equipment out of their hard earned pennies and as such want to see both value and effectiveness.
In some cases that will be an individual home owner or business who wants to tackle an issue which is blighting their quality of life or costing money. For them CCTV is invaluable.
More recently we have been working with groups of individuals helping them to use CCTV to great effect. The most successful of these organisations is Hillingdon Residents against crime. An extremely active group headed by chairman Brian Walters they liaise with local police to both prevent and detect crime in their London borough.
Over the past year we have advised HRAC on the various CCTV systems available for their members and supplied accordingly. We have also devised ways of achieving certain goals such as vehicle number plate recording whilst still keeping costs down.
The net result of all this work is that over the past year there have been arrests and convictions for a number of offences ranging from criminal damage, burglary, vehicle theft and fraud (rogue trading). In the most serious instance an elderly member of the community was defrauded out of thousands of pounds. The CCTV footage from that incident helped in securing a sentence of nearly two years for one individual with further prosecutions pending.
The local police and trading standards officials have been very excited by the results obtained by what are, in the general scheme of things, modestly priced domestic CCTV systems. The problem is that most people who fit CCTV end up with very sub-standard systems or systems which have not been set up properly because the basic principles are ignored or not fully understood.
At CCTV42 we are more committed than ever to educating potential users of CCTV and helping them achieve worthwhile CCTV systems which can eventually turn the negativity around. Our partnership with HRAC shows that CCTV can and does work extremely well when planned properly.
So next time you read a negative headline putting down CCTV think of us !
