As plans are underway to have an additional 40 Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras installed in the city, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon announced that the police will be able to monitor the live feeds from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Eve Leary.
Luncheon, who is also Secretary to the Defence Board, made the announcement at his post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday.
He said it was a Defence Board decision after a review and that the Board noted the tremendous benefits the CCTVs bring especially in criminal investigations.
“The Defence Board recognised the need for further development of [the] system and they approved the further increase in the number of sites and the number of cameras at main arteries in and around Georgetown,” he said.
In April of this year, acting Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud had told this newspaper that part of this year’s $7.4 billion budget for the Guyana Police Force would be used to purchase the equipment necessary to facilitate a live feed from the government installed CCTV cameras.
Luncheon said that this has been done and the police at CID are able to view feeds in real time.
Since the implementation of the CCTV monitoring programme in 2007, only government’s Central Intelligence Unit (CIU), located in the compound of Castellani House, at Vlissengen Road, had access to the feed.
Only when requested were the recordings made available to the police, prompting calls over the years by the opposition and observers for the police force to also have a feed of its own.
Luncheon informed that there are about 40 sites, with three or four cameras designated to each.
It was unclear too how many were functional and when Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee was asked last year to give clarity on how many were working he had replied tersely that “Whether they are working or not there are cameras in place.”
Luncheon yesterday said that all of the cameras were working but that occasionally they would have to be maintained or replaced as there have been instances of vehicles crashing into poles they were on or of persons stealing them.
He said that recordings from the CCTVs has been of tremendous help to the police in helping to solve crimes and a boost in prosecutions and with the new systems there will be upgrades to their software specifications. This would allow for night vision feeds and clearer imaging from the cameras.
The cameras have been placed in high traffic areas, but despite several crimes being committed in the vicinity of cameras, footage is yet to be utilized by police or be of use in solving any of these crimes.
APNU MP and former police commissioner Winston Felix has gone on record as stating that the cameras have been a huge waste of money because they have not amounted to anything. Felix said the planning itself was ill advised and questionable, pointing to cameras located on Homestretch Avenue, which “serve no purpose; they have not detected any crime there.”
Citing the fatal shooting of Corporal Romain Cleto outside the Bank of Baroda on Avenue of the Republic last year, he had pointed out that it was a perfect example of the ill-advised installation of the CCTV cameras.
There have been concerns raised also about the authenticity of recordings as it was pointed out that footage could be tampered with and calls were made to address the possibility of eliminating, “cutting and doctoring” footage.
