A BROMSGROVE District Councillor has hit out at the authority over its CCTV coverage at a Rubery park.
Coun Peter McDonald spoke to The Standard following an incident of vandalism at Brook Road Park last weekend which saw £1,500 worth of damage caused.
The CCTV images were passed onto the police but Coun McDonald questioned why, if there was CCTV footage containing evidence on the Rubery incident, those monitoring the live pictures had not spotted the vandalism and stopped the perpetrators.
At Wednesday’s full council meeting, he called for a cross party working group to look at the situation surrounding CCTV. His motion was given support by members and one will now be set up.
A Bromsgrove District Council spokesperson said: “We have 91 CCTV cameras operating across the District.
“There are 17 cameras in Rubery, which not only act as a deterrent for criminal activity but record events, the images for which can be used as evidence by police.
“While we can’t monitor live footage from every camera all of the time, in the last year our CCTV scheme has been utilised in 1,391 incidents in the Bromsgrove District, including Rubery.”
She added 462 incidents were spotted by CCTV operators who observed and out of the 105 CCTV incidents within Rubery, 37 of them were initiated by CCTV operator observation.
• WHAT do you think? Does CCTV work in the fight against crime? Would you like to see more cameras or are there other more effective methods? Send us your views to [email protected] or write to the address on page eight.
