CCTV - why bother?

Published on 6th September 2007 in Letters

Sir - a question: what is the CCTV camera on top of the clock tower for?

I recently had the misfortune to have a mountain bike stolen from Goole town centre. It was locked up but left for the day on the precinct outside the Halifax, in the same place it's been for the last five years.

On finding the bike missing, I walked round to the police station and reported the theft. The desk sergeant went off for a moment, I assumed to get a pen and paper to take a statement. He came back with a telephone! I was told to give my statement to the lady on the other end and then ring the bell when I'd finished. I gave the lady a brief statement and was told they could not justify the resource to look through the CCTV footage due to the time-frame the bike was left, ie all day, and that there was little chance of me getting the bike back and to claim through my contents insurance.

I finished the call and rang the bell, making my second wrong assumption in the space of five minutes - that the officer would explain the process about how they would now set about looking for the bike and catching the perpetrator. But no, a friendly goodbye and I was on my way.

Two days later I received a very nice letter informing me I might want to go to the lost property collection unit… in Grimsby, as it may have turned up there!

Listen, I appreciate that my missing bike is not top of the Humberside Police agenda, but when I see bobbies casually walking along the riverbank on a nice sunny afternoon on a gentle saunter back to the station, it kind of grates on me.

So it appears as if we are wasting our time paying for CCTV, as unless you know the exact time an incident happened you'll probably get the same response. I would quite willingly give up a couple of hours of my time to trawl through the footage myself.

The message is clear for criminals in Goole: the city centre is up for grabs - take what you want, there is little chance you will be caught.

CCTV will probably catch me backing out of my drive without my seatbelt on, drinking cider in Riverside Gardens, speeding down Hook Road or assaulting someone outside the McDoner kebab shop late at night - but only if I am lucky.

(Name and address supplied)