Recent condemnation of the Mosquito product has been good for business, the inventor has told Professional Security.
It’s not every security product that has the European People’s Party (no less) demanding its banning across the continent. In June, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) called unanimously for a ban on all acoustic devices such as the Mosquito. For getting on for a couple of years, that party has sought the prohibition of the marketing and use of the ‘Mosquito’ youth dispersal device. A motion signed by several European parliamentarians (including Portsmouth South Lib Dem MP Michael Hancock) in July 2008 spoke of the Mosquito youth dispersal device, being marketed in Europe. ‘The unit is designed to discourage loitering by undesirable adolescents by emitting high-frequency sounds which only young people under the age of 25 are able to hear. The ‘Mosquito’ device emits ultrasonic tones which are unpleasant to the ears of 90 per cent of children under the age of 12.’ They claimed this stigmatised young people and posed a danger to their health. “The problems of juvenile delinquency and the security of our fellow citizens should not be left in the hands of inventors of protection systems,” the parliamentarians wrote. The use of “Mosquito” devices, a report to the council reckoned, constitutes ‘a disproportionate interference with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention), which protects the right to respect for one’s private life, including the right to respect for physical integrity’.
A committee of the council – the Committee on Culture, Science and Education – last year asked all European member states to write to them on the product use. Some countries wrote back that they had never heard of the product. The UK (the widest user of the product) did not reply at all. The European Commission in 2008 had already decided not to legislate about the product. But none of that stopped the council; its committee report spoke of the Mosquito containing ‘demoralising elements and could lead to possible frustration in young people’ and ‘could constitute a health hazard’.
Howard Stapleton – inventor of the Mosquito, whose company is Compound Security Systems – told Professional Security that he was annoyed by the council’s debate – “I had no way of actually taking part in the debate; I felt that was very undemocratic, but there you go’. However the widespread publicity as a result of that ban appears to have worked as advertising. “Suddenly we saw a 200 per cent increase in enquiries and we have seen about a 150 per cent increase in sales.” Mr Stapleton, a former security engineer, puts this down to retailers and others having wrongly believed that the product was banned, hearing that the product is not, in fact.
Mr Stapleton acknowledged heavy criticism from the civil liberties pressure group Liberty. A ‘Buzz Off’ campaign to ‘stamp out the Mosquito’ did lead to some county councils banning the product, and as Mr Stapleton told Professional Security, many police forces and councils would not use the Mosquito, for fear of prosecution. And our June 2008 cover story was about how the Co-operative chose to use piped classical music to put off youths from hanging around their convenience stores, rather than an acoustic device like the Mosquito; the Co-op taking the view that their company ought not to drive away potential customers, who may merely be guilty of hanging around, with ‘a low-level sonic weapon’ (the words of Shami Chakrabarti, Liberty’s Director).
Mr Stapleton has sought an answer to indiscriminate switching-on of the device, now trialling use of the Mosquito with CCTV. If the retail manager trialling the new service who has the product fitted in-store is suffering from anti-social behaviour (ASB), he will alert police control who will alert Howard Stapleton. From CCTV footage Mr Stapleton can decide if the situation merits use of the device. Mr Stapleton argues that the device can easily pay for itself, given the cost of police call-outs to ASB, which the Mosquito can prevent. Youths, the thinking goes, don’t want to hang around the high frequency buzzing sound, and go elsewhere.
And as for alarm receiving centres who may be interested in offering this monitoring service, and CCTV installers who may want to offer the Mosquito also; Mr Stapleton may shortly be interested in you, via rental agreements! Asked by Professional Security what he made of causing such controversy, Mr Stapleton spoke of how anti-social behaviour ‘really got my goat’ and asked about the human rights of shop and home owners whose lives are ruined by misbehaving youths.
Mr Stapleton is planning other products, such as a chemical to be released with a void alarm, fitted for example to an empty warehouse. An intruder – typically a graffiti sprayer, or vandal – triggers a detector and gets a harmless but stinking chemical over him. There are other marking products on the market, as Mr Stapleton says – he names SelectaDNA and Selectamark – but rather than spray an offender with unique DNA that shows up under ultraviolet light, Mr Stapleton’s chemical will need a bath at least to remove and may embarrass or put off the intruder from entering the void property again. Another idea is a chemical released on detection of urine to deter people on a Friday or Saturday night from urinating in a shop doorway. To sum up, Mr Stapleton speaks of wanting to be ‘the czar of security products that actually bite back’. He points to the reduced public spending on police that may well mean less serious crime such as teenage ASB or late-night urinating being tackled (even) less. “So as a society we have to put more effort into how we can use fairly simple methods to protect our own property.”
For more on the Mosquito and other products by Howard Stapleton –
http://www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/
For what the Council of Europe said:
http://www.assembly.coe.int
For Liberty on its ‘Buzz Off’ campaign –
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/young-peoples-rights/stamp-out-the-mosquito.shtml
