Police forces have long had a love hate relationship with CCTV. In many cases it has proven instrumental in providing evidence that has led to successful arrests, prosecutions and sentencing. However, obtaining footage is often a resource-intensive process, with officers needing to travel to retrieve it on physical storage media. Yet, that’s not where the pain ends! With so many different video formats, officers sometimes need to wait for files to be transcoded to be viewable, and then there is the issue of sharing CCTV footage with the Crown Prosecution Service.
CCTV has been an integral part of policing for decades. As far back as 2015 the College of Policing stated: “There is evidence that CCTV reduces crime overall. There is also strong evidence that it is particularly useful in reducing crime in car parks and, to a lesser extent, residential areas.”
But it wasn’t until relatively recently that police forces embraced innovative approaches to securing CCTV for investigations. In 2019, Merseyside Police became one of the first forces in the UK to transform the process of obtaining CCTV with the introduction of a Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS). Using DEMS, the force could ingest digital information from a wide range of data sources electronically, including CCTV, without the need for officers to leave their desks. What’s more, Digital Evidence Management Systems like NICE Investigate can automatically transcode any video format, making replay instantaneous.
Since Merseyside’s deployment of DEMS, many forces have followed suit. In fact, today, most forces in England and Wales are embracing this capability and reporting significant savings.
So, surely there is now nothing but love between officers and CCTV? Not quite!
Whilst police forces have been on the path of digital transformation for some time – (you may recall the Policing Vision 2025 announced in 2016 and more recently the Digital Policing Strategy 2030) – digital transformation is a two-way street, and some businesses have not been so fast when it comes to upgrading their surveillance infrastructure.
This issue was recently raised by Superintendent Patrick Holdaway, the Lead at the National Business Crime Centre (an organisation established in 2017 to facilitate the partnership between UK police forces and business communities in fighting crime). Superintendent Holdaway said: “The main blocker to businesses using DEMS is the CCTV system they are using. Some of the older, more outdated systems don’t have the ability to upload and share CCTV footage electronically. These systems aren’t really helping businesses or the police when it comes to gathering evidence and investigating a crime. Just as businesses need to upgrade IT equipment, they also need to update CCTV systems to ensure they are still fit for purpose in a modern, digital world.”
In its 2023 Crime Survey report, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) called for ‘Police and Crime Commissioners to elevate the importance of retail crime in their strategies leading to an improved police response.’ There are positive signs that the engagement between the police and retail community is improving, with the report also stating that the majority of retailers (56%) are positive about police response. This is the first time the figure has been above 50% since 2014-15. What’s more, the retail sector spent a staggering £722 million on crime prevention, which invariably includes CCTV.
But retail is just part of the overall picture. It’s a different story for the public sector, where local councils maintain large numbers of highly geographically distributed analogue cameras, that would require significant investments to upgrade. This has been compounded by ethical considerations relating to the procurement of lower cost cameras, as stressed by the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Professor Fraser Sampson. Still, good progress is being made with regular reports of old cameras, control rooms and video management systems being replaced and upgraded.
It has been suggested that there is one CCTV camera for every 13 people in the UK. That’s a lot of CCTV footage. But, being able to get this footage into the hands of officers to solve crimes (when situations demand it) inevitably requires close collaboration between forces and communities and businesses. In this regard, DEMS is a gamechanger.
One great success story and example of this is Lancashire Constabulary’s recently announced NICE2SHARE initiative. The initiative is geared at encouraging homes and businesses with CCTV cameras to register cameras (voluntarily and at no cost) via Lancashire’s Community Portal. The NICE2SHARE initiative is made possible as a result of Lancashire Constabulary’s deployment of the NICE Investigate Digital Evidence Management System.
