In our July print issue of Professional Security, we praised the first of a three-part TV documentary for its even-handed look at a control room monitoring tower blocks. The series ended on Monday night, June 23, with another rounded picture of a city centre scheme.
CCTV: Caught on Camera showed that work in the Southampton city centre control room is anything but Big Brother – of the George Orwell-1984, or the Big Brother House on Channel 5 sort. The final part of the Channel 4 documentary series covered the public space control room, ‘on the outskirts of the city’, with some 1000 cameras. One of the operators, Elliot (surname not given) said: “Most people going about their daily business have no need to worry that they [cameras] are there. If you did a survey, I wonder how many people would know there are cameras there.” While the documentary did not do any deep analysis or come up with original statistics, it did a fine job of showing how various groups in the city centre space treat CCTV, whether as an ally or something they are too drunk to notice.
Like a silent movie
The programme also let the operators in their own words say something of how they view their job. Elliot likened it to watching a silent movie: “That’s what I love about it really.” He suggested also that it affects his life when he is not at work – or, he has an observational personality that’s brought out by his job: “You do become a people-watcher, and pick up on things.” He added that he even finds himself in a pub watching people, without realising it. While the documentary briefly covered day-time monitoring – such as two young men selling ‘perfume’ that was in fact water – most of the hour was given over to the night shift. CCTV was not some evil oppressor but a tool to aid hard-pressed and short-staffed 999 services, and door staff, having to deal with many drunken, aggressive young people. Just as in the first of the series some tower block dwellers urinated in the lifts, so we saw people urinating in shop doorways, even we were told on a war memorial. One man peeing was on camera yards from the backs of uniformed police. While in the words of one operator, Keith, ‘females can be as leery as lads’, the documentary gave two examples that CCTV is a friend of women. First, if lone women (or men) separate from friends and set off for home, and are vulnerable, the CCTV operator may try to follow them, for their own safety, until they pass out of camera range. Also prostitutes, as one told the documentary, try to protect themselves by doing their work under cameras – though private ones at warehouses for instance, rather than the council ones, which they (rightly) doubted were monitored. One prostitute said: “It’s definitely not a job I enjoy doing, it can be soul-destroying.” She described how she was once threatened with a knife, and pointed out the CCTV they were under to the knife-man.
Effect of cuts
As the programme showed, operators are looking for something abnormal, that might turn violent, so that they can alert police in good time. The documentary did well to show the effect of public sector cuts: a group of Chinese students was set upon by local youths and one was hurt. An ambulance took time to arrive; a street pastor held the injured man. As the ambulance had trouble finding the scene, the CCTV operator by radio – only one example of the radios shown to be useful – asked a doorman to go onto the street to direct the ambulance. In another case, CCTV could see a scene at a pub front door ready to ‘blow up’, but police being short-handed could not arrive before a man was laid out. In short, situations were allowed to ‘fester’, or might play themselves out, covered by CCTV. One operator admitted to frustration that he couldn’t change what’s on the streets. As he put it, a camera can never put hand-cuffs on an offender; CCTV can never replace officers on the beat. The documentary, then, closed by asking how effective CCTV is; people are still homeless and begging, or being sick on the pavement, or having fights on Saturday nights. Facial recognition was aired as adding to the power of CCTV; it could save police time by finding suspects. Yet, given that police are dashing from alert to alert on Friday night, would they be able to arrest those flagged up by CCTV?
