Despite having CCTV cameras installed in various parts of the Bunbury CBD since 1998, the City of Bunbury remains equivocal about its commitment to their continued use.
It was recommended to Councillors at last night’s meeting that they not accept the $120,000 on offer from the Office of Crime Prevention, on the grounds that monitoring of the system was a policing matter, and this sort of activity was not the “core business” of the City. In its recommendation, the City also passed on advice from unnamed sources who had warned Local Councils not to accept enticements from other levels of Government that involve additional obligations on local government.
It raises the question that if law and order issues and the safety and wellbeing of residents is not core business to a Local Council, then why do they operate Ranger Services? The fact is that the enforcement of local by-laws is both core business and policing, so enforcing a standard of conduct on City streets through the use of CCTV could equally be seen as an extension of Ranger functions.
The recommendation came despite the acknowledged investment of more than $300,000 in CCTV infrastructure over more than 10 years, and the clear social and economic benefits identified in reports from previous monitoring trials.
While Police were happy to administer the previous trial and freely acknowledged the benefits it provided to their operations, the Police Commissioner was reported to be unwilling to bear the ongoing cost at a time when budget cuts were severely cutting into front-line Police services. The Commissioner is quoted as saying the system will be monitored on a “needs basis”, a statement which is impossible to interpret without a qualification of what constitutes a “need” in Police terms.
The benefits of a monitored system over a “passive one” have already been identified and acknowledged, as have the most troublesome periods when violent crime is likely to occur , but it is not clear that these would constitute “needs” from a Police operational perspective.
It is also clear from recent criticism of Ambulance services that response times in times of crisis can have significant impact on outcomes. If CCTV provides improvement not only in behaviour modification, but also Police and Ambulance response times, then it could be said there are also health benefits from their use.
The view of the City that monitoring of CCTV is a police matter is not a majority one according to a study conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology in 2003. Of the 33 open-air CCTV systems they examined, only 21% where monitored by Police.
Following a short debate Council rejected the recommendation and chose instead to accept the $120,000 and responsibility for administering the monitoring staff for two years, but only while funding lasted.
Mayor Smith also expressed the hope that the Media would put all antisocial elements on notice that the CCTV system would soon be fully active again. He said that a reduced incidence of adverse events in the CBD had coincided with previous media reports on the system.
Podport approached the City for comment, but CEO Greg Trevaskis declined an interview, saying that it was a decision for Council.