CCTVIma g e | Ro oms wi t h a Vi ew Cofnodi ar gamera CCTV(Caught on camera)
In the first of a two-part article, CCTV User Group director Peter Fry takes off on a tour of Wales, to find out how the systems have developed in the past decade. In this issue, he visits the North Wales Police Joint Command Centre, Gwynedd County, Neath & Port Talbot and Bridgend County.
TOWARD THE end of last year, Debbie and I packed our bags for a 800 mile trip round Wales. No it was not a holiday trip, but as it had been so long since visiting some of the Welsh CCTV systems, and having heard of many interesting improvements that had been under- taken, it was our opportunity to get up to date, see what was happening in other Welsh systems and meet our members.
N. Wales Police Having decided to start our tour in
the north and work our way south, we drove to Llandudno on a beauti- ful sunny day to meet up with Mike Harrison-Jones of CCTV Services Ltd who had kindly offered to act as tour guide in the north. Our first visit with Mike was
to the North Wales Police Joint Communications Centre at St Asaph which opened in 2007. I have visited several Police Command and Control centres over the
years, but what made this one particularly interesting was the ‘joint’ element, with ‘blue light’ services present with fire and rescue service officers in the same location – and there is even a desk for the Welsh Ambulance Service which is staffed during the busier hours when a closer joined up working relationship is required. But joint working doesn’t end there. CCTV images from all local authority systems in North Wales are available to the 99 dispatchers, together with all the Welsh Trunk Road Agency traffic cameras, and the National Police Air Support heli-cameras. These use three down-
load receivers located strategically around North Wales which can transfer images to the Joint Communications Centre from the high definition camera on board as well as relaying images from body worn and dog cameras on the ground. In the future the solution will be able to
transfer images to smartphones allowing officers on the street to access still images of offenders or incidents in near-real time. The National Police Air Support Unit can even view local authority CCTV images from the airbase before take-off to ensure conditions in the area are suitable for their operation. In addition to the Joint Communications Centre
Mike Harrison- Jones
which also houses the silver incident control and an impressive training room, North Wales Police HQ based in Colwyn Bay also houses the fall-back control room and one of the three strategic command centres in Wales to deal with major civil incidents which both makes heavy use of all the CCTV capabilities. As with most authorities, the major challenge in
2012 was the need to save costs. The innovative decision was made to migrate from rented fibre optic transmission to an IP digital system, using the police force’s IT network and Veracity-Instek Matrivideo recorders. Mike and CCTV Services Ltd developed the soft-
National Police Air Support heli-cameras: three download receivers located strategically around North Wales can transfer images to the Joint Communications Centre
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Wint e r 2013 17
ware pack which controls all these links and displays the images on each of the dispatchers command and control terminals. Whilst the change was born out of the need for
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