Rudman's city: Big Brother cannot come to the camera right now

By BRIAN RUDMAN

On the market these days, for those willing to take the gamble, are make-believe burglar alarms. For a fraction of the price of the real thing, you can buy a fake security camera and alarm box and screw it above your front door.

With luck, the marauding, would-be burglar will spot the decoy, think it's the real thing, and go bother your neighbour instead.

Downtown Auckland's 16-camera police surveillance network has been a bit like these fake alarm systems in recent weeks. The officer who monitored the screens during hoon-time on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights resigned around Christmas, and the thin blue line is so under-staffed that no one was available to replace him.

Police say they have advertised the position but have been "unable to fill it."

In that time, the Britomart area has experienced a rape and two bashings - one of them fatal.

Now Auckland retailers have come to the rescue, offering to pay for and provide someone to fill the surveillance vacancy until the police can get their act together.

Just how the retailers' organisation, Heart of the City, can produce an instant replacement while the police say they can't find anyone is a mystery to me. Particularly as the police now seem able to find the staff needed to slowly view their way through two or three hours of tape from 16 cameras in the hunt for clues to the latest bashing.

Whether same-time monitoring of the CCTV cameras would have prevented any of last month's assaults, I don't know. But it might have revealed suspicious behaviour at the scene, or subsequently, when assailants ran into neighbouring streets. What is certain is that with no one watching, nothing suspicious is going to be seen.

A police spokeswoman says that following the resignation of the person monitoring the screens, other staff at the Jean Batten Place monitoring centre are expected to do it "as part of their duties." However, given that the staff have other duties and that the station is not staffed all the time, this is all very hit-and-miss.

It is certainly not the service police offered Auckland when they persuaded first Auckland City councillors, then later, Heart of the City, to fork out at least $350,000 for surveillance equipment since 1994.

Each time the city paid out ratepayers' money, the police were eager to emphasise how the monitoring would be in real time. Back in 1996, Senior Sergeant Ian McCormick said he would employ two former officers as monitors. It would be their sole task, he said.

Then there are the regular public-notice advertisements extolling the virtues of the system.

The following is from one dated January 22, 1997, signed by Superintendent Norm Stanhope, Auckland District Commander: "The purpose of the cameras is to deter, or to provide means of immediate detection of, criminal offences ...

"The initiative is intended to provide safety and security in a part of the inner city where car thefts, violence and disorder have been found to be a problem."

The cameras had "facilitated the rapid response of police units to instances of violence."

I wrote a column at the time objecting to ratepayers' money funding a Government department's activities. I also expressed my unease at the spread of Big Brother.

Mr Stanhope responded with a stern letter to the editor that concluded: "Mr Rudman should feel much easier that any would-be assailant is likely to be under observation by police, making his visit to the inner city a safer and more pleasurable occasion."

For the past month at least, this has not been the case. It's taken a rape, a homicide and a bashing to bring this to public attention - and then only because worried retailers have stepped in.

Having convinced Aucklanders of the merits of the surveillance network, and got us to pay for much of it, it's surely up to the police to uphold their part of the contract and keep it properly staffed.

Downtown Auckland attracts more than 30,000 revellers every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Retailers are already funding a private security presence to try to maintain order. Now they're having to stump up with someone to staff the police surveillance centre.

They deserve our thanks. That said, it's not right. Policing is a Government affair. It shouldn't depend on hand-outs from private citizens and local government.