Lae’s crime prevention experience with CCTVs

Wagambie … rising crime in Lae was checked with help of CCTVs
LAE was known as one of the most notorious cities in PNG plagued with criminal activities in numerous hotspots such as the main town market.
Rising crime was checked after a security CCTV control system and centre was set up to help police Lae city.
Former Lae Metropolitan Commander Anthony Wagambie Jr said CCTVs had helped police and Sector Response Unit (SRU) 101 significantly in crime prevention and law enforcement, especially at the market, to nab street vendors and drunkards causing public nuisance and disturbance.
“The CCTVs have also assisted in traffic management and identify illegal PMV crew and operators,” he added.
Wagambie, now the NCD/Central Acting Assistant Police Commander, said car tampering and theft were a daily occurrence in car parks prior to the installation of CCTVs in Lae.
“Syndicate members who thrived on pick-pocketing and stealing cars were disbanded at the main market area following multiple arrests and jailing of suspects identified by CCTVs.
“As a result of police using CCTVs, petty criminals who preyed in the market area migrated to other locations such as Top Town and Eriku.
“Plans are afoot to roll out CCTVs other city areas in consultation with partners and stakeholders. We have identified strategic locations to put up cameras in Top Town and Eriku using wireless connectivity linking to the police control centre at facility now under construction,” he added.
After Top Town and Eriku are digitally monitored, Wagambie said, the police focus on public law and order enforcement would be on Kamkumung, the Miles and China Town.
“The idea to use CCTVs in daily police operations are being carefully planned. Be patient with police in Lae as the digital watch programme is being rolled out step by step.
“This programme is funded by companies that hope to make Lae a safer city for all to live and work harmoniously. It is not funded by the Government.
“Things don’t happen overnight. It took us much time and effort to win the trust and confidence of the business houses to invest their own money to help the police to enhance law enforcement and actions.
“When law and order are in place to restore public trust and confidence in communities, businesses and economic activities will automatically flourish to boost both domestic and international economy,” he added.

Tsang … digital-technology-assisted surveillance had proven successful to fight crime
The use of video surveillance with added electronic and digital features has already been successfully adopted and applied by police in developed countries to fight crime, says business consultant for Huawei Technologies (PNG) Pvt Ltd Simon Tsang.
Tsang, who was brought in by Huawei for an ICT (Information Communication Technology) workshop last July, said the use of e-digital technology-assisted video surveillance had helped governments reduce or curb crime in their countries.
“These countries have benefited much with reduced crime rates that generally helped boost both domestic and international economies,” he added.
“Kenya is very famous for tourism and people go there to see different flocks of animal movements in certain seasons.
“Tourism is the major revenue-earner for Kenya. But, in 2011, the crime rose rapidly and significantly, prompting governments of countries like the US and those in Europe to issue travel alerts to their citizens to refrain from visiting Kenya.
“Kenya’s tourism industry was badly hit. As a counter measure, they started installing video surveillance systems and in 2015, it was announced that crime rate had dipped significantly.
“The tourism industry started recovering, and tourists started flocking to Kenya again,” he said, adding that there were many advanced technology software features that can be used for security surveillance.
“These include facial recognition and other tracing capabilities that helped the police to identify, track and capture criminals that much faster and efficiently.
“To have an effective and superior surveillance system in place to assist police, you will need to have a network of high definition/resolution cameras installed at different locations and angles.
“It should have a network for you to capture the video to a Cloud Storage that is backed by a software for carrying out analyses and facial recognition.
“In the past, police used to try to analyse video footage by looking at it frame by frame. But now, with facial recognition, it is so efficient and fast that they a face can be searched within a few hours.
“It is called video synopsis which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse the video footage to identify a person.
“After recognising the face, you can then match it with the citizen database or the suspects’ database which the system can also do for you efficiently and quickly,” he added.
Tsang said there were also tracker systems “that are used to identify the location of a suspect after the suspect’s identification”.
“The tracker traces the locations where and when a suspect has been captured by CCTVs. Besides identifying suspects, license plate trace is also available with sufficient database.
“You can compare and gather information about the car the suspect had been using, such as the model, colour or whether it is stolen.
“So tracking the licence plate automatically recognises those information and where the car was last seen on camera. This saves much time and manpower,” he added.
“The types of systems need a large storage network that will have the capacity to store and analyse information quickly that runs on a fast 4G network or, better still, 5G.
“The benefits of having such search and tracker systems in place are that the crime rate will decrease by a certain percentage and case handling is solved much quicker.
“Such e-surveillance systems are also a deterrent to criminals who, obviously, would not want to be captured on video cameras,” he added.
Tsang said the combination of electronic software, hardware and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies were fast evolving and improving “is making policing globally that much more efficient daily”.