Live CCTV footage to be available on YouTube
Middlesbrough talks more spin! They don’t even allow you to take photographs in the town in case you catch them assaulting the public or behaving illegally.
As a cost cutting measure police forces around the UK are to close down CCTV monitoring control rooms and instead are providing footage from the cameras as a live feed on YouTube. It is hoped that, with the audience that YouTube provides, members of the public will see much more of what’s happening on the nation’s street than the current operators and will give Crimestoppers a call.
‘We’ve had to do this,’ said Chief Superintendent Pratt of Teesside Constabulary, ‘as it’s often so boring that our people nod off and miss important crimes. Only the on-line community have the stamina to stare for hours on end at poor quality footage of people’s arsing about – and now at least we can say the streets are being monitored..’
The scheme is currently undergoing trials in Middlesbrough and demand on the YouTube site is high. The system is interactive, and users can turn the camera by moving their mouse to look at whatever it is that takes their fancy. ‘That’s causing a few 
problems at the moment,’ said DSI Pratt, ‘we quite often get one person wanting to look at a fight at closing time on one side of the street while someone else wants to watch the lasses mooning on the other side. The camera just goes backwards and forwards and all we get is a wobbly picture of the middle of the street which is no good to anyone. We’ve had to replace several camera motors already.’
With the popularity of the system looking guaranteed, the terrestrial channels are now considering their own CCTV coverage. ‘For some time now we’ve been filming a load of drunk people spilling out of a pub…’ said a BBC spokesman. ‘The girls are always crying and the blokes fighting and swearing. We call our version “EastEnders”.’
Posted: 20 April 2008 by Team Biscuit
Apr 27 2008 by Eleanor Gregson, Sunday Sun
COPS caught drink-driving are avoiding the sack and are instead being allowed to remain in service or retire at taxpayers’ expense.
Guidelines saying officers convicted of drink-related driving offences should be sacked or forced to resign are not being followed by some North forces.
The Sunday Sun can reveal that, since the Home Office guidelines were issued six years ago, 21 officers from the North’s police forces have been convicted of drink-driving . . . more than half of whom were allowed to remain in service or retire.
Information gathered from Freedom of Information requests showed that nine officers from Northumbria Police were convicted of a drink-driving charge.
One stayed in the job after a disciplinary hearing while the other eight retired.
Three officers from Cleveland police were convicted of a drink-driving charge, with one officer remaining in service, while Durham Police convicted five officers for drink-driving and allowed one officer to retire.
The guidelines, issued by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers at the end of 2001, state: “An officer convicted by a court of a drink driving office can expect to face a formal misconduct hearing.
“The usual sanction to be applied . . . is either dismissal or a requirement to resign to reflect the serious view which is taken both inside the service and by society generally.”
Roger Vincent, spokesman the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: “It’s always disappointing when you see somebody who is a police officer who is brought before the court for drink- driving.
“People expect them to set a good example in the way they behave as drivers.”
Victim slams cops’ policy
YOUNG mum Michelle Garrity, who suffered horrific injuries after being ploughed into by a drink driver, has slammed cops for not immediately sacking officers convicted of the offence.
Michelle, 24, was left fighting for her life after the accident over two years ago and is still in pain. She said: “It’s absolutely disgraceful that police officers are drink-driving and are not being automatically sacked. Why is there a law — which they are supposed to be upholding — if they’re not going to adhere to it?”
The crash killed her friend Stuart Elsender, 24, and left his younger brother David in a critical condition.
Michelle, of Cramlington, Northumberland, suffered two fractures to her skull, three neck fractures, a punctured lung and several broken bones.
