Dear Editor,
As the robberies, break-ins, murders, attempted murders etc. continue, I met with a businessman whose store was recently burgled in Robb Street and he asked me to enlarge a photo that someone took of a person far off that might have been a look-out while the burglary was taking place at his store.
Because the person was standing over one street away and the photo was taken with the automatic settings that the phone came with, when the image was enlarged, the subject was blurred (looking at its normal size, the person could hardly be seen in the picture). The man indicated to me that this was not the first time his store was burgled and this time they entered from the roof and the previous time the concrete wall was breached for the perpetrators to gain access. He is not the only person experiencing these type of burglaries because most people know that the people making the cement blocks make more than the normal amount of blocks from a sack of cement and that makes the blocks very weak. Apart from that, when the mason is laying the blocks they are supposed to fill the block holes with mortar (cement and sand) but most of them don’t and then when they are plastering the wall they plaster it very thin. Whenever a wall is drying and you could see the blocks lines, that tells you that the plaster is very thin and the wall is very weak so breaking is not a hard job.
Editor, I pointed out to the man that if he had security cameras on his premises, he could have gotten better images/videos of the perpetrators and possibly be notified immediately while the burglary was taking place. In a previous letter I pointed out some points about security cameras and I would like to advise people that instead of depending on law enforcement alone to solve crimes, they could also assist tremendously in protecting their building.
There are a lot of stores selling security systems and checking most of them you discover that most of the prices that they are selling for here are four times the original cost and I believe that their astronomical cost deters lots of people in obtaining a security system. There is a security system that includes four cameras and one recorder that records over five hundred (500) hours of video. Along with that it has a feature that allows you to be anywhere and you could view for free your building via the security cameras once the system is hooked up to the internet and you have internet access where ever you are even on your mobile (wifi). The cost for that is approximately US$200 in America but here the price is way above that. Some also take pictures of any movement and email it to you immediately. As I pointed out, most of the CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) cameras are auto focus but some of them are manual focus with a screw at the side of the camera that could be adjusted to capture images at a particular point. Those with auto focus take time to focus and by the time it focuses the image/subject is out of the camera view so it is far better to purchase a camera with manual focus.
Finally Editor, many people with mobile phones have cameras and they use it for their personal use but they should start taking pictures of those who they know and find some means of storing them.
One of the best methods is to email it to someone or even to yourself. That way the image could be retrieved years after. The reason I am saying this is because over the years, lots of domestic murders have taken place and lots of time a proper photo of the person cannot be located for the police and media and with all the technology available, more could be done. Even if someone is in a group of people, he/she could be enlarged with hardly any loss of quality of the picture by anyone with access to a computer. SimillaEnlarger is a free programme on the internet that anyone could download and run on their computer, then just drop a picture and select the area that needs to be enlarged and enlarge. I have taken up enough space but in another letter I will get into details about enhancing videos and photographs that almost anyone could do on their own and installing of CCTV cameras.
Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates
