Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s CCTV control room is featuring on a Channel 5 documentary over the coming weeks. The command centre at Hammersmith Town Hall is in a new Five series, ‘Criminals: Caught on Camera’. The control room can stream images from around 800 cameras and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, using high definition, infra-red and LEDs.
Presented by Nick Wallis, ‘Criminals: Caught on Camera’ investigates how CCTV operators and police are combining to catch criminals, hooligans, and drunks, around the clock. H&F Council has high definition PTZ cameras that can zoom hundreds of metres and come with infrared night vision and even windscreen wipers to combat the elements.
Live images can be beamed direct to command centres in police stations or downloaded at the touch of a button to be used in criminal investigations or as evidence.
Inside the control room, ten 47 inch LED screens form a video wall that beams live images from around the two boroughs to five operators who work around the clock. Council operators are poised to instantly respond to live situations and alert the police, or other appropriate authority, as events unfold.
Councillor Greg Smith, H&F Council Deputy Leader, said: “Crime is falling year on year in Hammersmith & Fulham and that is partially because our CCTV network is snaring the crooks. In fact, a recent probe showed that our camera network is capturing around 500 incidents a month. Criminals know that if they go out and commit a crime in this borough there is a very good chance that they will be ‘Caught on Camera’ with the evidence used to prosecute them. This series will give residents across the country a first-hand insight into how this council is embracing the latest technology available to make our borough safer.”
The first episode of the three-part series was broadcast on Channel 5 on Friday, October 18 at 8pm.
View here – http://www.channel5.com/shows/criminals-caught-on-camera/episodes
