INSTANT CCTV |
13/06/07 - Camwatch captures intruder within 36 hours
NIGHT, CAMERA, ACTION!
At 2pm on Friday 27th May, Mick Hector had never heard of Camwatch. Yet, less than 36 hours later, the Company’s rapid deployment CCTV towers had been installed on his site, a theft had been thwarted and the Police had apprehended a suspect.
On the outskirts of Worksop, Nottinghamshire, CNN Build Limited are constructing eleven luxury apartments. The site has been live since Christmas 2006, and in the early days there were no particular security problems.
Then, six weeks ago, all that changed. A spate of malicious damage, vandalism and theft threatened to delay the project beyond the September finish date. Mick Hector, Contracts Manager, was worried. As a relatively small, specialist company, CNN could not simply re-deploy personnel on to other sites while the damage was made good, and there was the inevitable knock-on effect on company cashflows.
Mick’s initial response was to bring in a security guard, but a limited budget meant that he could not afford to have the site manned right through the night. Consequently, the culprits simply waited until the guard left at 1am, and continued their illegal business unchallenged.
On Thursday 26th May, Dennis Coleman, Director of CNN Build Limited, came across the CamwatchTOWERTM, a rapid deployment CCTV solution designed specifically for construction site security. Camwatch, the UK’s largest CCTV monitoring company, was demonstrating the product and its associated services at the SED 2007 show in Corby. After a couple of phone calls, it was agreed that two TOWERs would be delivered to the Worksop site the following afternoon.
“It is a typical installation for us”, said Phil Bunting, Camwatch’s Managing Director. “The perimeter of the site is secured with passive infra-red (PIR) detectors that trigger on movement or body heat, and a couple of CamwatchTOWERs capture, record and transmit the images to our National 24/7 CCTV Control Room. As all the communications links are wireless, there are no ‘civils’ required and we can be in and out in a couple of hours”.
The new system did not have to wait long before it saw some action. In the early hours of Saturday morning, just hours after the Camwatch installation team had left, a detector fired and an intruder was seen carrying rolls of roofing felt from the storage area (see picture-strip below). The operator at Camwatch’s National Control Room warned the would-be thief over the public address system (also part of the TOWERs’ electronics) that he had been spotted, that he was being recorded and that the Police had been summoned. As is usually the case in such circumstances, this was sufficient for the intruder to decide that ‘discretion is the better form of valour’, and he ran off.
But 24 hours later he was back, this time with a friend. Mick Hector picks up the story, “In discussions following the first incident, we agreed with the Camwatch monitoring team that if a subsequent intrusion occurred, they would not issue a warning but simply call the Police directly. Consequently, on the Sunday morning, the culprits were unaware that they had been spotted until it was too late. The Police were brilliant, they were there within minutes of the call from Camwatch”.
And what does Dennis Coleman think of his discovery? “I am thrilled”, he said. “The incidents occurred over a Bank Holiday weekend, and I dread to think what we would have come back to on Tuesday morning. The ‘all-inclusive’ rate of Ł350/week is considerably less than we were paying for a security guard, so in this one incident, the system has paid for itself! We will definitely be using Camwatch on future projects”.
Dennis Coleman and CNN Build Limited are not alone. The CamwatchTOWERTM system is now being used by six of the top ten construction companies in the UK.
Camwatch can be contacted on
Saturday 26th May 2007, 01:25am: In the early hours of Saturday morning, the intruder starts to stash rolls of roofing felt. As the TOWERs’ infrared illumination is invisible to the human eye, he has no idea he is being watched until the Camwatch operator issues a verbal warning over the PA system. Then, he immediately leaves the site.
Sunday 27th May 2007, 01:04am – 01:10am: Sunday morning, and he’s back to collect the swag with a friend (just to the right of the tree). After discussing the previous night’s intervention with the client, Camwatch are briefed to call the Police directly without issuing a warning. Within six minutes, officers are on the scene and a suspect is apprehended. 
