A message for Bill Sykes......

Post by **Oscar Namechange** » Sun May 10, 2009 9:10 am

Hi Bill,

If you re-call, we had a disagreement over taking photographs of people in the street and the legalities of it on my thread 'Should we have the right to proctect our homes?'

I apologise for not replying to your last post. I wasn't trying to duck out out of what you had said, but i was waiting for a senior police officer to get back to me so i could put some questions to him about what you had written and some of the links put on the thread.

To cut a long story short, he told me that you are indeed correct. The police do try to deter people from taking photographs of people in the street for several reasons. 1) They get a lot of 'breach of human rights' nonsense to sort out when some-one complains to them which takes up vital police time. 2) Parents complain under 'The child protection' regulations and insist the person is arrested again taking up police time. 3) They do try to deter it to safeguard against pedo's taking pics of children in public parks etc.

He now advised us to put as many cctv camera's as we like up on our house but to display a sign saying 'cctv in operation for prevention of crime' to safeguard any false accusations that we are filming the children coming out of school next door.

abbey · Post by **abbey** » Sun May 10, 2009 10:47 am

You and Bill had a disagreement?...........Never!

Post by **Oscar Namechange** » Sun May 10, 2009 10:54 am

abbey;1186472 wrote: You and Bill had a disagreement?...........Never!

:wah: I'm not so stubborn that i won't admit it when i get some-thing wrong

Bill Sikes · Post by **Bill Sikes** » Tue May 12, 2009 3:02 pm

oscar;1186445 wrote:

He now advised us to put as many cctv camera's as we like up on our house but to display a sign saying 'cctv in operation for prevention of crime' to safeguard any false accusations that we are filming the children coming out of school next door.

I hope that any "security cameras" you employ are useful. It's always worth remembering that the police are not the law. If you can afford a decent camera, so much the better - one good one may be worth a couple of poor quality ones.

For interest: BBC NEWS | England | Cambridgeshire | Serial burglar caught on webcam - a nice solution to the problem of one's PC (containing the recorded material) being stolen.

You don't, of course, "need" "signs" as above - but they might perhaps be useful as discouragement.

Post by **Oscar Namechange** » Tue May 12, 2009 3:20 pm

Bill Sikes;1187748 wrote: I hope that any "security cameras" you employ are useful. It's always worth remembering that the police are not the law. If you can afford a decent camera, so much the better - one good one may be worth a couple of poor quality ones.

For interest: BBC NEWS | England | Cambridgeshire | Serial burglar caught on webcam - a nice solution to the problem of one's PC (containing the recorded material) being stolen.

You don't, of course, "need" "signs" as above - but they might perhaps be useful as discouragement. What a fantastic way to catch a thief ??? That's indeed brilliant engineering.

We have indeed invested in quality camera's. As you say, the cheap one's are sometimes a let down with the definition. Mr O installed motion flood lights a couple of days ago as well. We did have one but not too high beam for fear of dazzling residents as they came down the lane as it's so dark out there. The police said that if we put high beam up, once it had dazzled the residents once, they would know it's there and they would expect it. A few residents have commented that they feel much better for us having it. we were also advised to put a wire caging over the camera's as they tend to attract stone throwing sometimes.

We have had not a flicker of trouble since the big one last week but i have to say that was probably down to the brilliant way the officer who attended dealt with them at the time :wah:

Thanks for the link.... most interesting.