Interviews

Lambeth double at CCTV awards

by Mark Rowe

Lambeth came away from New Scotland Yard with a pair of premier awards at the Metropolitan Police CCTV awards, on Friday afternoon, June 3. The south London borough’s CCTV operations manager Kevin White was named best CCTV manager; and the Lambeth CCTV operators were named best CCTV team. Best CCTV operator was Masum Mangera of Waltham Forest, pictured centre with (left) Robert Jackson of 3d Forensic and Tony Porter, Surveillance Camera Commissioner.

CCTV operators from the boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea (who share a control room) and Camden, Southwark, Ealing, Hackney, Enfield, Redbridge, Islington, Kingston upon Thames, Barking and Dagenham, Croydon, Brent and Hounslow were also honoured. Their work took in assistance to a counter-terrorism police officer, armed robbery, shootings and firearms finds, vehicle theft, cashpoint fraud, money laundering, drink-driving, sexual assault, drug dealing, and missing persons.

Compere of the event was Met Det Chief Insp Mick Neville, head of the Central Forensic Image Team; who introduced Tony Porter, who presented certificates. Commander Julian Bennett, area commander for south London, whose responsibilities London-wide include business crime and CCTV, also spoke.

Kevin White sits on a British Standards committee; and was one of the founders of the London CCTV Managers Group, and was chairman for several years. Speaking to Professional Security after the awards ceremony, he described CCTV as an integral part of community safety, that provides protection to the public in many ways; deters crime and captures crimes in progress, and provides evidence, as well as what he called ‘simple things’, such as raising the council’s attention to storm damage, such as falling branches, which might otherwise injure the public. CCTV also integrates with emergency planning, in case of major incidents and disasters in London.

He said: “Lambeth have a strategy of integrating all CCTV cameras across the borough, in accordance with the national CCTV strategy recommendation, to create a central hub for CCTV.” Lambeth’s 479 public space cameras cover housing estates; high streets; and five town centres, ‘which captured up to 16,000 incidents last year alone’.

As the overall award citations showed, the work of a CCTV operator and control room can range from major crime to cats stuck in trees; graffiti; fly-tipping; and tenancy issues and anti-social behaviour.

Main sponsor of the event was the contractor OCS Group; other sponsors were Bosch; Eurovia Vinci; Vemotion; BT Redcare; Dallmeier; and 3d Forensic, whose FILM (Forensic Image Linking and Management) database is in use by the Met.

Also honoured were some of the Met Police’s ‘super-recognisers’; briefly, they are police officers and staff with an out of the ordinary ability to remember faces and to put names to faces. Their recognition of suspects typically from CCTV stills – though even logos on clothing might prove memorable – leads to arrests and convictions.

More in the July 2016 print issue of Professional Security magazine; the June 2016 issue features words and photos from the Met Police’s first ‘Police and Security’ (PaS) awards for security officers and others whose crime prevention work was recognised by Scotland Yard.

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