CCTV proposed scheme for Forest Fields : public meeting report

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/7293928.stm

Some highlights:

CCTV cameras in Nottingham do not reduce residents' fear of crime, according to a city council report.

The review of the city's CCTV network found residents did not necessarily think the cameras had an important impact on crime.

But Nottingham City Council's Masaud Subedar said CCTV remained a good tool in detecting crime.

...

"Our experience in Nottingham is that CCTV does not necessarily bring a significant reduction in crime and is, and should only be, installed as part of a considered and integrated crime reduction strategy," Mr Subedar said.

He added the city's CCTV would not be changed as a result of the report.

...

The report said: "In areas where cameras are installed the residents' perception of the impact of CCTV on the reduction of crime, fear of crime and detection of crime was low."

What are the red dots in image number seven ? Are they crimes ? If so, what type ? Do the dots represent litter or dog doings ? We need captions !

I wonder how stupid they felt when they realised the irony of being concerned about you taking pictures of them.

The red blobs are 'sites of reported crimes'. What was uncertain though was the severity of these incidents. If I remember correctly, this was over a three years period of measurement. So, not particularly a heavy incidence.

Councils are implicated in using these tools to chase folks for dog fouling and littering, so some of these might be accounting for these misdemeanours, while others are car crime, burglary etc. The clusters on these maps, they say, inform the location of the 'movable cameras'.

I've just added our own report back from the public meeting, and current analysis of the sham consultation process.

It's online here:  http://www.forestfields.org.uk/2009/04/29/report-from-public-meeting/

Here's a repost of the text - to avoid clutter, links numbered in square brackets appear at the end:

Around 60 people came to the public meeting on April 23rd about CCTV proposals for Forest Fields, which was organised by the Area 4 Neighbourhood Management Team, police and local council.

We also managed to get an article in the Evening Post [1] to counter the previous completely one-sided pro-CCTV Evening Post article [2].

As one of the people who opposes the scheme, based on my experience at a previous public meeting (in which I was yelled at by three different people for daring to question the supposed “benefits” of CCTV for Forest Fields) I had been expecting a pretty difficult meeting, in which those who oppose would be in the minority.

I’m glad to say I was pleasantly surprised! People who opposed the CCTV scheme in Forest Fields made up at least two-thirds of those present at the meeting (based on a show of hands), and many had come armed with some tough questions, expecting answers.

Unfortunately, save for a few bits of vital information which should have been on the council’s door-to-door consultation leaflet, we didn’t really get much in the way of answers.

What we did find out:

* The cost of installing the masts is around £3,000 per mast - thus £9,000 for the three masts proposed for Forest Fields.
* Footage is held for 31 days.
* The maintenance of Nottingham’s CCTV network is outsourced privately at the cost of £250,000 each year.
* The CCTV scheme is intended to combat anti-social behaviour, reduce crime, and improve public safety and confidence. (Unfortunately, they still didn’t tell us how it will actually do this, but they assured us repeatedly that it will!)

The meeting was only an hour and a half long, and with most of it taken up with the presentation, there was only half an hour or so allowed for questions - let alone any in-depth discussion or debate. Most non-straightforward questions went unanswered or dodged, and reasons the public might not want CCTV here were at best glossed over, and at worst just dismissed.

As expected, the entire presentation was completely one-sided in favour of CCTV, but with very little (maybe even zero?) in the way of facts or statistics to back up the constant assertion from Inspector Gurmit Kaur that “CCTV does prevent and deter crime”. Perhaps this is because the statistics - from the government, no less - uncomfortably reveal that CCTV has a negligible effect on either of these things? Nearly all of the reasons cited for installing CCTV here were anecdotal, and unsupported by facts.

There was absolutely no mention whatsoever of any alternatives to CCTV in the presentation, and neither was there any mention of civil liberties concerns or other personal (and equally valid) reasons for not wanting CCTV here.

When confronted by one member of the audience with the Home Office CCTV Study (Feb 2005) [3], which contains figures showing that CCTV has a negligible impact on crime, Detective Inspector Rob Griffin said that he had not read the report and therefore couldn’t comment on it.

Clearly, it is a mistake to assume that the police are interested in evidence to back up their claims about the effectiveness of CCTV - especially when that evidence says the exact opposite of their own personal anecdotes.

When another member of the audience said that she didn’t like the idea of her teenage son being treated with suspicion simply because of his age and appearance, and that she didn’t want her children growing up surrounded by CCTV cameras, D.I. Griffin responded (and honestly, I kid you not): “Let me ask you this - what if someone were to come into Forest Fields and take your child?”

He didn’t back down when challenged on the ridiculous nature of this question either!

I found it incredibly telling that one member of the panel who was most keen to persuade us that we should have CCTV here, actually knew the least in terms of a factual basis to back up his claims (because the facts show the opposite), yet was only too happy to resort to fear-mongering rhetorical questions, presumably in order to halt that line of discussion.

I left the meeting with a bemused sense of wonder - at how they could have had literally months to prepare this presentation, in the full knowledge that there is substantial opposition in the area (and already knowing what some of our arguments against CCTV are), and yet still do such an appallingly bad job of it?

Luckily, you don’t have to take my word on how bad it was, because you can take a look at the slides and listen to the audio yourself on Indymedia. (Thanks Tash!)

Nobody in Forest Fields has been given enough information to make an informed decision on whether or not CCTV is a good thing for the area, and therefore the entire consultation must be viewed in this context. Despite it now being on it’s second round, it is still an entirely inadequate sham of a consultation, and I now believe this is deliberate.

From the language used in the consultation and the completely one-sided presentation, it is abundantly clear that we are not being asked to express our views so that the police and council can make a decision, but that this whole thing is an exercise in ticking a few “democratic” boxes, while we roll over and accept their foregone decision that CCTV will be coming to Forest Fields.

I know we can do better than that, and show that if we really do want to make a better Forest Fields for everyone, it has to be through a much more committed long-term process to make positive improvements in the local community, rather than wasting money on negative, externalised technical “solutions” such as CCTV to video our problems.

CCTV is a lot worse than just an intrusive waste of our money - because it actively disempowers the local community and goes against the idea that our community is our responsibility to improve, and ours alone.

We should make no mistake - the meeting may have gone relatively well for opponents of the CCTV scheme, but this is far from over yet.

I sincerely hope that we won’t let the police and the council ignore our concerns, fly in the face of all the available evidence discrediting CCTV, sham their way through a “consultation” and foist their CCTV system on us.

Let’s stand up for Forest Fields and make sure that doesn’t happen!

Links from above:

1:  http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Residents-say-CCTV/article-935172-detail/article.html
2:  http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Residents-welcome-CCTV-year-wait/article-895070-detail/article.html
3:  http://no-cctv.org.uk/caseagainst/docs/Assessing_the_impact_of_CCTV-HO_study292.pdf

We have written a letter to the Berridge councillors and council leader, signed by 22 Forest Fields residents, to try and put the brakes on these CCTV proposals.

It's online here:  http://www.forestfields.org.uk/2009/05/04/letter-to-councillors/