Sponsored by
CCTV crunch point
MARKET Rasen's eye in the sky could be blinded at any moment unless moves to keep the CCTV system running in a new guise soon bear fruit.
At a crunch time for the future of the surveillance system - with nothing to replace it now that all the contracts for its operation have expired - it has emerged that within the last month it proved indispensible in resolving a serious public order offence.
As previously reported Market Rasen Town Council said that it was no longer prepared to pay out 10,000 a year to transmit the pictures to West Lindsey’s monitoring room - a tenth of the council’s budget that falls solely to town ratepayers - when the whole district was sharing the cost of having Gainsborough’s CCTV monitored.
The council pulled the plug on its BT contract in March but the pictures have continued to be streamed through to Gainsborough and West Lindsey’s operators have continued to look at them.
This proved to be invaluable three weeks ago when at midnight the operator scanning the pictures from the Market Rasen cameras saw an incident in the Market Place and instantly activated the police to the scene where arrests were made and a case subsequently put forward for trial.
Yesterday, Tuesday, the day on which maintenance contract ran out too, town police chief Inspector Rod Brant said the officers in that case had been ‘full of praise for the CCTV operator’.
“CCTV is absolutely indispensible. It doesn’t replace a police offer but it is an extra pair of eyes, picking things up that otherwise the police may not be able to respond to.”
The latest idea is for the constant monitoring to cease, but for a replacement system that is recorded constantly and can be later reviewed for evidential purposes.
This would not allow for the instant response which Insp Brant said had been key in this latest of many cases where CCTV had made all the difference in solving a crime and securing conviction.
The mother of someone who got caught up in the June 5 town centre assault said the speedy action of the CCTV camera operator was clear justification for keeping them running. “Please keep or CCTV,2 she has implored to politicians holding the purse strings.
The Mail understands that a bid is being made by West Lindsey for a police community crime fighting fund which would only provide for the existing for cameras to be recorded around the clock rather than monitored.
The district council’s chief executive Duncan Sharkey said, “So long as the pictures keep coming through we will keep supporting the system and keep monitoring and recording but the system belongs to Market Rasen Town Council and its future is in their hands.
He said that the district had to focus its resources where there was most need and as a consequence it was assessing its arrangements for the coverage of Gainsborough. It had also refused to bail out Caistor’s system where a solution similar to that suggested for Market Rasen is now on the table.
The town council would have to make a financial contribution if the CCTV is to keep running, but it shouldn’t be anything like as large as the 10,000 it claims it can no longer afford.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Market Rasen
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
