Anti-Chav Cameras
Debates are raging in the security industry, especially in times of financial hardship, about whether having CCTV is truly cost effective. If you were to look to terrorist incidents at home or abroad and consider the investigation afterwards, or to when a young child is abducted, the benefits of having CCTV coverage cannot be questioned. Yet if you have had your property vandalised by a group of hoodie clad teenagers and want to identify them then frustration can cause you to doubt your systems effectiveness.
Paul Trendall, Operations Director at Carlisle Security has been quoted as saying. “Only the other day I found myself looking at something which is being used to defeat even the very best CCTV systems. Less than four inches high and weighing less than three ounces (or should that be centimetres and grams), it can render any CCTV image useless as evidence. Even more remarkably, it is already widely available and can cost as little as £1.00 per unit. This anti-CCTV device may be more familiar to some as a baseball cap.”
This quote has led Security Life magazine to scour around for an effective combatant against this simple but effective barrier to the effectiveness of your CCTV system. Interestingly we found that there are others who have found this to be a problem and are coming up with new ideas to resolve it.
The best product we could find for retail purposes was in the United States. Over there they have a popular tradition of having a money tray next to the till which customers can leave change in. ‘Strange’ you may say but the Americans add tax on to items at the till rather than it being included in the price as in Europe. This can lead many to find themselves short of money by a penny or two when paying for something. Hence the penny tray. What a kind lot. The idea is catching on in the U.K. as well as other countries especially at Petrol Stations or Service Stations.
An interesting solution has also been found by a CCTV installation team in West Wales aptly named CCTV4U. They have taken a mini dome which is relatively shock proof and installed it at low level in order to capture images of faces.
We were quite impressed with this and contacted Daffyd Wheatley at the company to ask him about the pros and cons of doing this. “Installing low level cameras has proved effective already. We have seen footage of criminals in hoodies scouting round a property looking for things to steal. They have approached these cameras out of curiosity and by the time they recognise their purpose they have had an image of their face captured. Customers have been calling us specifically asking to have these cameras installed and the feedback seems to be extremely positive. Some of the downsides are that because of the angle of the view the camera is pointing to the sky backlighting can be a problem on very sunny days. Overall though we are very pleased, and are looking for newer cameras on the market, that can be used for this purpose.”
Although you will always have an argument against the effectiveness of the use of CCTV within the security industry, there seems to be overwhelming evidence that the ups outweigh the downs. Rather than whining about the latest barrier to the usability of a system there will be those who work to achieve a solution to the problem. Is this not how the best inventions on our planet were created! Hoorah.
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