Editorial | CCTV makes a difference

This newspaper’s revelation on Sunday of how closed-circuit television (CCTV) connected to the JamaicaEye network helped to solve, or aid in the arrest of suspects in recent violent crimes, highlighted a low-hanging fruit which the Government should be more aggressive in reaping.

Which isn’t to suggest that the system is not being used or that the authorities are unaware of its value. Rather, The Gleaner believes that there ought to be a far more robust mobilisation of support for the system; that there should be greater urgency in building-out surveillance cameras in public spaces; and that the State should probably incentivise private firms and individuals to connect their security cameras to the JamaicaEye network.

Further, after six years of operation, it is time for the JamaicaEye project to be subjected to an empirical review to determine what has been its impact on crime, identify its areas of underperformance and why, as well as how its kinks and wrinkles are to be ironed out.

For instance, there must be clarity on what obligations and responsibilities, if any, private owners of publicly-facing CCTV systems have in the context of the Data Protection Act, and whether they should enjoy any indemnity from the State with respect to breaches of the act if these cameras are linked to the JamaicaEye system.

Indeed, since its launch in 2018, there has been no formally-released statistical report on either the definitive number of cameras in the network, or the number and categories of crimes they have helped to solve. However, the system’s potential is intuitively understood. And Sunday’s report gave specific examples of positive outcomes.

There was, for example, the case of Romeo Fullerton, 21, who is now serving a life sentence for murder, and two sentences of 23 years each for using a firearm to commit a felony.

On February 14, 2023, Mr Fullerton was captured on a CCTV surveillance camera shooting dead Keith McIntosh in the May Pen town centre, in Jamaica’s south-central parish of Clarendon. The case, essentially, was a slam dunk. After he was arrested, Mr Fullerton quickly confessed.

THEY CAN HELP

A fortnight ago residents of an east Kingston community alleged that three young men were extrajudicially killed in the area by the police, who they claimed planted a gun on the bodies of the victims. Usually, these types of allegations are back-and-forth affairs that, over time, dissipate for lack of conclusive evidence either way.

Last week two police officers, Corporal Mark Roye and Constable Kelby White, were arrested at the request of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), the agency that investigates shootings. Corporal Roye and Constable White have been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, for the alleged gun plant. Evidence from surveillance cameras apparently played a role in their arrest.

Obviously, such cameras, whether privately operated as part of the JamaicaEye network, aren’t a panacea to Jamaica’s crime problem. Neither will they, by themselves, cause a major decline in the more than 1,000 homicides committed in the island annually. But they can help, especially with the monitoring of public order and in the deterrence of certain types of crime if the cameras are aggressively monitored and the information they provide is quickly acted on.

That is the experience in other countries that have heavily invested in the use of surveillance cameras, albeit most have nowhere near the volume of criminal violence that affects Jamaica.

Britain is a prime example of a western democracy where CCTV (the technology that emerged with significance as a tool of law-and order and anti-crime surveillance in that country in the 1980s) is widely utilised in crime prevention and detection.

The UK has an estimated 5.2 million surveillance cameras, or approximately one for every 13 citizens. That, depending on whose data is used, is roughly half the ratio of China where an estimated 200 million cameras equate to around one for every seven citizens, which, some analysts say, is a severe undercount.

ENCOURAGING RESULTS

China’s number, using the 1:7 ratio, would, on a per capita basis, be about the same as the United States.

Outside of the arguments that China uses its public surveillance cameras as means of keeping a “Big Brother” eye on its citizens, Britain is perhaps the most cited country for using CCTV against crime. Its stats on this count, as well as those of other countries, should be largely encouraging to Jamaica.

The UK’s College of Policing, a professional development and research and standards-sharing body, recently published a summary of a meta-analysis of 76 studies in several countries (34 of the studies were done in Britain and 24 in the USA) which showed that crimes generally decreased 13 per cent where their CCTV system operates, against places where there were none.

The analysis also showed that drug-related crimes decreased by 20 per cent, while vehicle and property crime each decreased by 14 per cent where surveillance cameras were employed.

Said the report: “The largest and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in car parks and, to a lesser extent, residential areas.

“In car parks, crime decreased by 37 per cent overall in treatment areas compared to control areas… Five of the eight studies on CCTV in car parks demonstrated statistically significant reductions in crime.

“In residential areas, crime decreased by 12 per cent overall in treatment areas compared to control areas (based on 16 studies). Five of the sixteen studies on CCTV in residential areas reported statistically significant reductions in crime.”

Our suggestion to National Security Minister Horace Chang: put more cameras in public spaces, tell Jamaicans about it, and ramp up JamaicaEye.