NSI and Facewatch have announced that they intend to work together in a partnering arrangement for the Facewatch online crime reporting tool.
The National Security Inspectorate provides certification schemes for the security and fire sectors. They will be adding the Facewatch online police crime reporting service to their training offer and will be encouraging approved companies to roll out Facewatch to customers.
Facewatch training and support will be provided by NSI to any company wishing to use Facewatch as part of their CCTV. It will also be possible, using the key performance indicators from Facewatch to establish how systems are operating to provide evidence for police.
Facewatch report that they system is already used by 7,000 businesses across the UK. The software allows crimes such as shoplifting and personal theft to be reported to police online. Nine UK police forces have signed up to use the software and many others are considering, Facewatch adds. CCTV footage and suspect images can be uploaded to Facewatch.
Until now, Facewatch argues, CCTV has been a poor relation to the forensic approach taken by the police in the use of fingerprints and DNA. This is mainly because of the time and trouble to collect, analyse and store CCTV footage. Besides, poor quality CCTV imagery may be provided, often in a format that cannot be viewed clearly by the police without special software. Many cases fail in court due to basic issues such as DVDs not playing or disks getting lost.
The partnership seeks to address these weaknesses. NSI will ensure that business users are given training to ensure that they are completely confident in using Facewatch. It also strengthens the inspectorate’s aim of improving CCTV quality and standards of service provided by NSI Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs) and systems installers.
Jeff Little, Chief Executive NSI, pictured, says: “NSI is delighted to be working with Facewatch to ensure that this new and innovative crime reduction and reporting system is managed, delivered and fully exploited. The new NSI training and e-learning suite for Facewatch will be the catalyst which ensures that companies will be able to provide a system to their customers that will result in lower crime levels and will also help to improve the quality of CCTV evidence provided to the police services.”
And Simon Gordon, Chairman, Facewatch Ltd said: “We are extremely pleased to be working with the NSI to improve standards of crime reporting and intelligence sharing. It is essential to our national roll out plans that Facewatch can be successfully integrated into business of any size or complexity and that the quality of the CCTV system is such that the evidence uploaded to Facewatch is useable by police and the courts.”
