By NAOMI LARKIN and BRIAN RUDMAN
The inability of police to consistently monitor Auckland's inner-city surveillance cameras - aimed at cutting crime - has forced retailers to pay for the service themselves.
The 16-camera network has been without a permanent person to monitor it since the staff member who did resigned from the position in December.
Police admit that since then their monitoring of the closed-circuit television system - installed in 1994 - has been inconsistent.
The job has now been added to the duties of officers at the Jean Batten Place police station.
Since December there have been two beatings, one of them resulting in the death of 23-year-old telemarketer Nick Clarkson, and a rape in the downtown area.
Auckland City police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty said that although the surveillance had never been round-the-clock, seven days a week, the peak periods - Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights - had been covered for 12-hour stretches.
About 30,000 people are estimated to visit the central business district over this period.
Ms Hegarty said the monitoring was at present carried out only when staff were in the station and available, but not for consistent periods.
Police had advertised the position but had been unable to fill it.
In response to the violent incidents, retailers' organisation Heart of the City has decided to foot the bill for a person to staff the cameras in a bid to fight crime.
This comes on top of the organisation's investment of $70,000 in three additional cameras in 1997.
Heart of the City spokesman Alex Swney said the success of the CBD as an entertainment destination meant that a lot more people used the area.
"Our fear was that all of our promotional efforts could be easily undone by this perception that the heart of the city was unsafe."
When the surveillance system was proposed it was decided that the Auckland City Council would pay for the hardware and police would staff it.
Since then ratepayers have provided at least $350,000 for the equipment.
In 1997, Superintendent Norm Stanhope, then Auckland district commander, said the cameras were a successful crime-prevention tool.
"The system," he said, "has been instrumental in the apprehension of offenders for a wide range of crimes, and facilitated the rapid response of police units to instances of violence and disorder."
Retailers step in as police leave crime cameras unattended
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