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Originally Posted by josy
]I used to be the same but when we had our own private CCTV installed we actually had the police at our door asking to look at it when someone was murdered down the street, when we asked them what was wrong with the CCTV cameras on the street they said none of them were facing in the right direction, so that's 4 different camera along one street and they were all facing the wrong way.
Same thing happened again when the shop over the road was vandalised
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A few months ago we had a group of teenage boys who would run riot around the streets nearby every weekend, getting stupidly drunk and scratching everyone's cars, chucking bins around and (somehow) one of them even managed to punch their fist through an old mans window. It was a complete shock because it's a very nice neighbourhood and usually very quiet so no one understood why this was going on but the police were absolutely useless, so people started buying private CCTV cameras. One Saturday our neighbours camera caught a group of them kicking in the back of our car causing a huge big dent. The camera caught all of their faces perfectly, but didn't quite catch which person it was who kicked in that specific dent so they were all let off, none got in trouble.
On the plus side none of them have returned since so the cameras were effective in preventing them from causing any more damage but it's incredibly frustrating for none of them to have been punished when they caused many thousands of pounds worth of damage across the neighbourhood. I think the legal system requires changes in that sense. If the camera can't identify the specific person who kicked in our car but can easily identify all of their faces standing around it then punish all of them just for being associated with the crime.
I am in favour of more CCTV cameras for reasons I have said, it's deterred the criminals from returning, but I would be so so much more in favour of them if they actually had any use in prosecuting people.