9 Finding and identifying criminals: from cine film to CCTV
While many of the technologies you have learned about so far were developed outside of policing and later adopted by police forces, UK policing has also developed new techniques ‘in house’. In 1963, the Home Office created a ‘Police Research and Planning Branch’, staffed by both police officers and scientists, which subsequently had an important role in developing ‘new and expansive forms of surveillance-orientated policing’ (Taylor, 2016 please supply full reference to go in refs list).
Figure 13: The control room for the West London traffic control experiment, 1968 [Description: A black and white photograph showing a room with two police officers sitting facing away from the camera operating large consuls. One police officer has a sergeant’s jacket on. In front of them are numbers of TV monitors, some banked up on the floor, others mounted on the wall. There is also a very large street map on the wall in front of them showing London streets just north of the River Thames. The map has numbers of indicators marked on it, presumably showing the location of CCTV cameras.] Source: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/the-control-room-of-the-computer-controlled-west-london-news-photo/1360167010?adppopup=true
The PSDB undertook significant research on technologies which allowed observation and surveillance at a distance, often related to traffic and crowd control. Not everything it developed had scientific validity, or even practical efficacy. The development of the Photo-FIT system for producing wanted posters, for example, ‘owed more to vested interest and energetic promotion than to scientific underpinnings or proven efficacy’ (Lawrence, 2019).
Other endeavours, particular related to traffic control and surveillance, were more successful. Figure 13 shows an early traffic control experiment focussed on Oxford Street. The first use of a computer for this purpose, it allowed the automation and analysis of traffic flow and accidents. Such initiatives soon became focussed on the use of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). While film had been used by the police in surveillance as early as 1935, CCTV offered significant new possibilities for policing.
Activity 5 Early surveillance filming
Click to watch the film clip. It is the earliest known police surveillance film to be used as evidence. It shows evidence of illegal street gambling in Chesterfield in 1935.
Source: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-evidence-1935-online Selected excerpt likely 2:55 – 4: 55. May have a copy in the department in helpful.
Once you have watched the clip, consider the following question:
How convincing do you think this footage would have been, when presented in court?
Comment
While the footage was presented in court as seemingly incontrovertible of evidence of illegal gambling activity, in fact the court was more sceptical. Of the 37 men arrested, the majority (25) were discharged by the magistrates. The defects of the use of film as a piece of evidence were the focus of debate and of the 14 cases which resulted in conviction, a further six were successfully appealed. As Williams (2009, p. 6) noted, ‘the case thus showed up the limits, rather than the power, of recorded visual surveillance’.
Worried about public disorder during anti-Vietnam War protests in 1968, the Metropolitan Police installed a permanent CCTV system outside the US Embassy. This had the distinct advantage that, unlike prior instances of public order policing where accurate information was hard for commanders to obtain, ‘those at the top could be instantly apprised of the success or failure of the entire chain of command under them’ (Williams, 2014, p. 164).
The history you have considered in Sections 3–9 has demonstrated a pattern of far-sighted, inventive adoption of new technologies by police forces, but also problems. These have included:
- Problems with implementation (when technologies have not proved reliable or conclusive as evidence).
- Problems generated by reliance on private contractors or third party organisations.
- Problems with perceptions of legitimacy and overreach on the part of some members of the public.