St David’s Shopping Centre in Cardiff has upgraded to digital video recording.
St David’s, which has more than 60 shops including Debenhams, Bhs and Marks & Spencer, replaced its analogue VCRs with a digital video recording system from Vigilant Technology 18 months ago and reports reduced crime as a result. Some 400,000 shoppers who visit St David’s each week are norecorded onto the digital system, which provides half frame rate recording at 2CIF resolution on each and every camera, providing virtual real-time playback and 31-day RAID 5 hard disk storage of video images.
What they say
Brian Vaughan, technical services manager at St David’s Shopping Centre, says the video images have helped police to detect crime. Brian recalls: "One of our external cameras captured a very serious assault that left a student in hospital for two months. The pictures of the attack captured by the system were so clear and detailed that they convinced the parents of the teenage lad who had carried out the attack to hand him in."
St David’s CCTV has also helped police disprove one woman’s claim that she was raped outside the centre. Recorded images from the centre’s cameras, showed the woman walking hand-in-hand with the man she had accused, during and after the time of the alleged offence.
Brian says: "In just one month, the police have collected around 70 CD-ROMs of CCTV evidence from us because the image quality, playback tools and storage capacity provided by the Vigilant system is so good. All but two of our cameras are pan, tilt and zoom, but the Vigilant system enables us to zoom in even closer on images at the playback stage, enhancing our ability to identify offenders."
Compared to analogue, digital recording has made it easier for St David’s to provide police with CCTV evidence. Brian adds: "With analogue recording, video footage could only be stored on one video tape, so if a police officer took the tape away to review, we wouldn’t have a copy of the incident to review ourselves or to give to a second police officer. With digital recording, we can produce as many CD-ROMs of the same piece of footage as we want."
CCTV evidence has enabled St David’s to issue banning orders to persistent shoplifters, besides helping police enforce Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). Brian says: "Shoplifters, in the main, have got the message and stay away from the centre."
St David’s has found the Vigilant recording system reliable, but knows it can rely on swift support if maintenance is needed. "Our system has a modem on it so if there’s a hiccup, Vigilant can dial in remotely and fix the problem straight away," says Brian.
The system was installed and is maintained by CDS Systems, based in Pontypridd. Land Securities, which owns and manages St David’s Shopping Centre, expects to work closely with Vigilant Technology for many years to come. "With CCTV, nothing stands still and the technology moves on at a very fast pace," says Brian. "I’m so impressed with Vigilant that if they were to develop new systems in the future, I’m sure we would look to introduce them here."
