UK: "Close surveillance" - crime-fighting tool of themillennium?
01 May 1999
Police in Brixton, south London, are using hand-held videocameras to film people "suspected" of street robberies. A senior Metropolitan police officer said: "CCTV was the new crime fighting weapon of the 1990s and close surveillance is the tool of the new millennium". Justifying deployment, police sources said that most muggings are carried out by repeat offenders, of which there are about 60 in Brixton. John Wadham, director of Liberty, pointed out there is also the "real danger that innocent people will be filmed and the footage used without their permission".
Close surveillance is not a new tactic - officers with video and still cameras have long been commonplace on demonstrations and at football matches. Under Section 25.7 of the Crime and Disorder Act, which entered into force in April 1999, police now have the power to force people to de-mask if they fear "serious violence or disorder". Saboteurs of a fox hunt in Dorset in March are believed to have been the first subjected to the new provision, with the entire county declared an area where police "fear serious violence". While at an anti-vivisection protest at Hillgrove cat farm, 41 people were forced to unmask by Thames Valley officers who arrested one man who refused to do so. Assistant chief constable Paul West said it had been a way of targeting "hard-core" demonstrators who could be looking for trouble. A spokesman for Save the Hillgrove Cats said "people wear masks because they are sick of being videoed all the time. They [the police] had about 40 evidence gatherers this time. They video everyone as a form of intimidation."
Oxford Star, 22.4.99; SchNEWS, 23.4.99; The Big Issue, 26.4.99; Sunday Times, 27.6.99.