In our September 2001 print edition, we reported on the video lab of consultants Control Risks Group, that can turn imperfect audio and video evidence into something more presentable in court. Here from the November 2002 print issue is an update – and it’s on DVD.
Teenager Marcus Hall was lying on the Luton street dying when his face was slashed as a ‘goodbye gesture’ by a gang member. Marcus had been in a running battle after a concert by So Solid Crew at a town nightclub. The murder investigation was one of Bedfordshire police’s biggest. Three Luton and three London men denied murder on March 21, 2001. In court, the prosecution case lacked fingerprint or DNA evidence and relied on video footage. That ranged from a hand-held video camera outside the club to public space CCTV – the operator capturing that final slashing, realising the incident was important, switched to real-time recording – and to 5am, monochrome and colour footage of suspects entering a hospital for treatment. The six accused were jailed for life this year. Judge Brian Barker at the Old Bailey described the footage as ‘chilling’. It was put together onto a DVD by the networks forensics side of consultants Control Risks Group. Peter Yapp, Deputy Director, Network Forensics, told Professional Security how the DVD was so critical to the case that the jury asked to take it with them while they deliberated: ‘We did this job in very close co-operation with the police. They then reviewed all the video footage and one police officer then gave a statement as to what was happening, almost frame by frame, which acted as a guide to the presentation of the case.? Such use of evidence saved court time, Peter Yapp said, and allowed a barrister to play a scene, rewind slowly again and again, and leave an image on the screen while he talked – a powerful tool for the prosecution.
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The Network Forensics staff, as reported last year, also enhance CCTV footage to show faces and number plates, for example. Peter Yapp described how it can be more difficult to enhance digital CCTV than analogue. The cost of digital recording means that the end user may compress recordings, so that Network Forensics finds there are simply too few pixels to work with. If an analogue recording has motion blur, for instance – a car and the camera both moving – at least there are the pixels so that by ‘pushing together’ those pixels it is possible to see the detail you want, such as a registration plate.
