Thursday 13 January 2011

Surveillance Society

Joanna Yeates’s killer could have driven from her flat to the roadside where her body was found without being recorded on a single CCTV camera, it emerged yesterday.
What?!?
Police are understood to have concentrated on more than 100 hours of footage taken from the most direct route between the landscape architect’s home and the lane where she was dumped, which is over the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

But a second route between the two locations, which adds only a few minutes to the journey time, is almost free of cameras.
OMG! Free of cameras? Say it ain't so!?
Surprisingly, any motorist or pedestrian making the four-mile downhill journey past rows of Georgian townhouses would encounter only a single camera positioned high on a lamp post.
'Surprisingly'. Note how they slip that in there. I remember when it wouldn't be surprising at all.

7 comments:

NickM said...

Resident power. A Bristol Georgian townhouse is pricey. The resident's association probably didn't their nice street cluttered with CCTV.

And good on them for that. The cops are making excuses. And you know why? They are so programmed to look for DNA and CCTV and all that they have forgotten old-fashioned detective work. Do they even care anymore about things like motive?

It's well past time Mr Holmes consulted his Bradshaw for the next train to Bristol.

Mark Wadsworth said...

That post chimes well with your slogan "You won't see me coming". Presumably you plan your routes to only use streets like this with no CCTV?

RAB said...

Holmes is already on the case Nick. You know I was thinking of doing this for us, but Julia is doing such a sterling job already I think I will wait till A&S Plod catch someone (this could be a very long wait though).

Now then folks,your Bristol corresponent here. See that big green space that the alternate routes are going around on the Mail map? Well that is the Ashton Court Estate...

http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Environment-Planning/Parks-and-open-spaces/parks/ashton-court-estate.en;jsessionid=097F5374B8C1D7DFAA1C9429307014A3.tcwwwaplaws3

The Balloon Festival, Kite Festival agricultural festival, and before it went bankrupt, a rock festival that managed, at it's peak, to attract 100,000 people to see Massive Attack, Portishead and Robert Plant, all for a fiver's admission (it used to be free).

Well see that track that comes out where the body was found? Yes, you can drive right through it and encounter no cctv whatsoever. Now I dont think, to be honest, that that is the way the murderer/s went. They lock the gates at night, and it would be too dangerous in daylight, but then murdering people is dangerous itself isn't it? The fact is the fuckin useless local Plod do not even consider the possibility!

As for Clifton, well yes, stuffed full of High Court Judges and Barristers in million plus apartments, let alone houses (the houses are generally HUGE).They are all for CCTV in St Pauls and Southmead, but don't want it cluttering up their Georgian ambience, oh no!

My parent's best friends were the head of S Wales CID and his wife. He, Chief Superintendent David Morris was a legend. When he retired in the 70's there was not one unsolved murder on the books, and he had no DNA or CCTV to rely on, just long experience,little grey cells and an uncanny instinct for when people were lying to him.

This bunch of box ticking, form filling, never meet the public unless you have to wankers, can't seem to find their ass with both hands with all the technology in the fuckin world at their disposal.

Ancient and Tattered Airman said...

Ah, the days of the 'policemans nose' which told him when things were fishy. The plod are no longer allowed to act this way as to the ever-watching PC crowd it would smack of profiling - or worse.

Anonymous said...

There are probably big questions in this case as to whether Plod has been competent. The Jefferies' incident doesn't look good, but we have no real clues on this except that press speculation was hapless.
Our expectations on CCTV and forensics are way off thanks to CSI,as are those some have about police revealing what they are working on.

JuliaM said...

"The cops are making excuses. And you know why? They are so programmed to look for DNA and CCTV and all that they have forgotten old-fashioned detective work. "

Spot on! The news last week that Scotland Yard was looking at replacing some of the younger ones on the team with 'old hands' was a bit of a giveaway.

"Presumably you plan your routes to only use streets like this with no CCTV?"

Oooh, if there isn't already an app for that., you've given me a great idea! :)

"When he retired in the 70's there was not one unsolved murder on the books, and he had no DNA or CCTV to rely on, just long experience,little grey cells and an uncanny instinct for when people were lying to him."

The sort of things only experience and people skills give you - not flash internal 'degrees'...

JuliaM said...

"The plod are no longer allowed to act this way as to the ever-watching PC crowd it would smack of profiling - or worse."

Everything is now 'risk-based'. Long gone are the days of 'Hmm, something odd here, let's pull him in'. Now, one eye is always on the CPS.

"Our expectations on CCTV and forensics are way off thanks to CSI,as are those some have about police revealing what they are working on."

Indeed. Didn't someone say last year that juries are reluctant to convict if there's no DNA, because they've heard so much about it?

A worrying trend if true.