The riots in August were bad, but some good seems to have come of them – in use of CCTV by the police, for example. So the Global MSC Security seminar on November 8 heard from Met Police DCI Mick Neville.
DCI Neville, a champion of the systematic use of CCTV evidence by police, is the man in charge of Operation Withern, the Met’s response to the August rioting in London. He – or rather his units – have 150,000 hours of footage, from public and private CCTV users. As in previous talks, Mick Neville stressed CCTV as ‘forensic images’, that police should use as properly as fingerprints or DNA. The very public (on Met and other police force websites, for instance) use by police of CCTV to arrest August rioters has meant police are taking CCTV more seriously. DCI Neville stresses the use of the images as evidence to prosecute criminals, rather than the CCTV hardware being an end in itself. CCTV can only deter, he argues, if it catches criminals. Or as he put it, he would ‘strangle’ the next person who said they could sell a ‘solution’: “If you have got in your head that you can invent a magic camera, or some magic box, then stop thinking that right now. It isn’t the full solution, it’s part of the solution.” The best pictures, or control rooms, are no use in crime prevention unless the images are looked at and lead to conviction of criminals: “We have got to have good equipment, but also good people and good processes behind it.”
As a sign of how the Met are taking use of CCTV evidence more seriously, each of the 32 boroughs is to get a VIIDO unit, and what Mick Neville described as ‘CCTV scene of crime officers’. By images, he is talking about not only CCTV, giving the case of the woman mobile phone thief who took a picture of herself with the stolen phone – which however was set to send any images to the owner’s Facebook page. Previously, Neville said, front-line police officers simply didn’t gather CCTV; they were not trained to download (mostly digital) footage; they were not supervised or measured on the CCTV they brought in. Neville spoke of how police officers have to learn to treat (CCTV) partners with respect: “I keep banging on about this. It’s no good police demanding they want things urgently, and they don’t collect it.” CCTV is of use beyond the direct crime – thieves caught doing crime on buses thanks to on-vehicle CCTV may be commercial and domestic burglars also.
Neville described how the Met is having a London-wide repository of images, so that ‘mugshots’ are shown, systematically, to police, partners and informants – as criminals caught on camera in one borough may well prove to do crimes in other parts. The Met is already doing poster campaigns as part of what Neville called ‘psychological warfare’ against criminals, and to show the law-abiding public that the police are on their side. Neville told some amusing stories: of a suspect running into a police station to tear the ‘wanted’ poster he featured on off the wall; and the youth ‘caught on camera’ in a newspaper, that his mother cut out and put on the fridge – something difficult to explain away. Neville stressed how CCTV forces better performance from the police – leading to detections – and offers a clearer picture of the value of CCTV, by making sure that arrests due (or largely due) to a CCTV identification (‘ident’) are so credited. Neville’s work to manage CCTV correctly, and for results, takes in the whole justice system. It includes showing footage in courts on DVD – as in cases where CCTV is played, court sentences are longer, he said. Besides, this systematic use of CCTV helps to catch the worst, vicious criminals, not only the ones caught at the scene of a crime, or who leave fingerprints. He highlighted work with the reporting website Facewatch, and with betting shop chain Ladbrokes, whereby the bookmakers are able to identify people doing criminal damage (of fruit machines, for instance) in their shops. That said, Neville did suggest that businesses – such as petrol stations, if they have CCTV of ‘drive-offs’, drivers filling up with petrol and leaving without paying – have to provide full crime reports, a disc of footage and witness statements, because police are ‘overwhelmed’ with footage.
For the future, Mick Neville is hoping for a FILM (Forensic Image Linking and Management) database by the end of the year, to link such things as distinctive clothing with ‘mugshots’. That database, he hopes, would be able to throw up matching descriptions. “We also want to make logo recognition a reality,” he said; here police are working with the video analytics software company Omniperception. As Mick Neville noted, while during the August riots many looters (alert to CCTV) wore hoods over their heads, with ‘logo recognition’ there is the prospect of identifying someone by a logo on their clothes. In another example of how the whole justice system has to be switched on, Mick Neville mentioned in passing that a suspect when having his photograph taken by police might be asked to take his baseball cap off, but that cap with the logo may be the very evidence linking him to crime scenes on CCTV. The Met is proposing to run a magazine with mugshots, called Nicked. DCI Neville, summing up, said that unless CCTV detects crime, it will never prevent it, because criminals do not fear cameras; they fear getting caught, ‘and thrown in a cell’. “If they are thrown in a cell because of a camera, they will fear the camera. It’s effective and cheap.” CCTV can solve as many crimes as DNA and fingerprints, he added, at a fraction of the cost. It has to be done according to a system: dedicated staff, a ‘performance culture’, lawyers trained to use CCTV; use of the mass media; and technology fit for purpose. Police were, indefatigably, pursuing the August rioters: “We are going to get them, through CCTV.” While answering questions from the floor, Mick Neville did speak of the Met using (trained) volunteers in their CCTV identification units, to view low-level incidents and so to free the Withern staff for more serious crimes. Neville, himself a Territorial, was welcoming of such volunteers; other VIIDO workers may be police officers who are not on the front line because they are unwell or pregnant, but still want to catch criminals. But, as he kept stressing in his typically forthright talk, CCTV had to be regarded as a proper forensic science, the same as fingerprints and DNA, with (national) training, standards and a career path.
