| CCTV: Using tech to combat crime | | Print | |
| Thursday, 16 September 2010 10:21 | |||
 It is no secret that crime hurts tourism, so the police in partnership with many resorts are aiming to take the secret out of committing crimes. Assistant Police Commissioner Dave Ryder believes a countrywide closed circuit television (CCTV) system would be a major benefit in preventing crime in the county. “It a proven fact that the knowledge a criminal will be detected is a major deterrent to criminals committing crimes,” Ryder explains. Having been involved in the development of a high tech CCTV monitoring system involving numerous databases including Automatic Number Plate Recognition in the Trafford Centre, Manchester, England, Ryder is intimately familiar with the effectiveness such a system can provide. Through improved partnership working and notably with the newly formed Tourism Safety Committee on Providenciales, his knowledge and experience will come in useful to deploy a similar system in the TCI, starting with Providenciales. Ryder says cameras should be placed in strategic locations across the island, beaming pictures back in real time to a central management station staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by trained staff ready to detect criminal acts and suspicious incidents and deploy officers to any location. Installing advanced CCTV capability would allow the police not only to monitor activity in specific areas, but also detect movement in and out of the wider area. “If we had traffic cameras at the major roundabouts, we could monitor a car and intercept it ahead of its path,” something Ryder says could significantly increase the successful response actions of the police. “Any vehicle that comes in and out of the area, if it is a stolen or if it’s a vehicle suspected to be active in various things (crime), we will be able to intercept or at least gather intelligence on its movements ,” Ryder explains. “This would provide constant real-time surveillance of suspected or active criminals. So you can see from that in controlling crime and controlling the threat of crime it is a significant tool in our armor.” All cameras would be connected wirelessly through the Internet, which would also allow for other uses such as during times of a national disaster such as a hurricane. “During a hurricane or major incident, you could run a command center from anywhere across the country,” he notes, something that would give the Emergency Services greater capabilities during a disaster. A Tourism Safety Committee was recently founded, spearheaded by local developers including Grace Bay Resort CEO Mark Durliat, Stan Hartling and others to help assist police in combating crime. The committee is made up of several resort management, as well as representatives from the police, governor’s office, Crime Stoppers and the Turks and Caicos Hotel and Tourism Association. The group is currently surveying the Grace Bay area to determine how such a system could work effectively in that high profile neighbourhood. Beyond the crime prevention benefits, a CCTV system can offer many other benefits to the community such giving a zero tolerance approach and improved safety, Ryder said. It is a fact that many serious criminals tend to commit other low level crimes, and the system could help to crack down on those with no vehicle registration or license plates, or with parking violations. “You can link it to an insurance database so you can actually tell if a vehicle is not insured and tell where it is and you can stop it,” he said. “You could also link it to the Road Safety Department so if a vehicle is not tested, it will set up an alarm and we can take them off the road. It would make police more effective in combating all those issues and especially the problems related to jitneys.” “There are lots of issues we can start to straighten up,” Ryder says, if the system could be put into place. “It would be a major step forward in the TCI, a technological solution to crime.” “We need to work on our databases and how we use them,” Ryder explains. Plans are in place to improve the electronic access to Road Safety department’s records and tie them more closely with the police databases. If these milestones can be achieved, a traffic camera could detect a vehicle which has no insurance at the IGA roundabout and police could intercept the car before it reaches the Five Cays bypass roundabout. A CCTV system could be taking criminals off the streets within a matter of months Ryder explains, if only the resources were available. Ryder explains the technology is well proven, used in countries the world over. “It is not massively expensive,” he says, “and it actually makes you use your resources more effectively so we get more from the same number of police officers.” The project is at a very early stage and financial constraints will prove a challenge, there is a real desire to make this happen and make the TCI a much safer and crime free place for residents and visitors to our shores, he said.
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