Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.
David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.”
He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.
In other vaguely unrelated crime news:
- Brit gov may inact laws that cut off Interwebitube access for file sharing.
- And from our side of the pond, Texas admits they executed an innocent man whose entire prosecution was based on lies.
#19 Texas long ago came down on the side of quick trials and quick executions. Actually getting it right takes a backseat.
I love the extremes. You hear them expressed in outrageously distorted plans concocted by politicians all the time, following this format:
If we spend (an ungodly amount of money)
and it saves just one (1)
child from (frowning for instance)
for (a few moments or similar),
then it would have all been worth it.
Bull puckey.
Texas killing people, innocent people, while their governor cravenly jokes about it, is old news.
Still–thanks ArianneB==the throw away really is worth its own post.
EDITOR==CONSIDER POSTING THE SINGLE ITEM. Of course, I’m happy to argue for the execution, even though it was the wrong thing to do.
Historically, death penalty case prosecutors in Texas have been unapologetic when later proven definitely, unequivocably wrong, even going so far as to oppose commutation of the sentence in court. “He was legally convicted in a court of law,” they’ll say, “The sentence should be carried out.”