CCTV State

"Prevention is better than cure", as they said. When it comes to crime prevention, nothing is better than the state-of-the-art Closed-circuit television (CCTV), apart from good policing.

You can say the developed countries in Europe and America are becoming paranoids to terrorist attacks since the historical 911 in New York. The London bombing on 7 July 2005 saw the terrorists successfully captured and sentenced with all the evidences, thanks to the CCTV. In a country like United kingdom (U.K.) where it’s the land of laws & orders, the deployment of CCTV has shown to be the most appropriate tool and aligning well with the policy of combating terrorism at its nib.

CCTVs are installed everywhere, public or private, day or night, watching and recording the activities of the residents in the U. K. The coverage is not on fixed properties only; the moving assets like buses, trains, tubes, and even taxis are installed and monitored on-line via wireless linkages. Taxi drivers in Sabah may welcome this as it could protect them from robbers.

The authority is so serious and confident about the technology that they have had deployed the gadgets almost any possible areas in the public; criminals and would-be offenders are virtually not having any chance to get away from crimes or offends without apprehended and prosecuted.

What a way to make the residents behaved, and reducing damages to public properties which I think will especially suitable in Malaysia where peoples are not seen or recorded when deliberately causing damages, and therefore not being nabbed and made to pay for their actions.

We have many crime cases not solved for years and quite often there were no traces and clues at the crime scenes or related scenes; and with the CCTV widely installed, clues and traces of information could have been left at the incidence. It’s therefore not difficult to pin down the culprits in the shortest time before all the evidences are lost.

The London Bombing is a typical success story of the application of CCTV system. DBKK, district Councils, or Government should aggressively invest in the application of CCTV as a means to protect not only lives, but public assets on a long term basis as well. The saving on less infrastructure damages may recover easily the investment costs within the first year or so.

Security is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. By the way, do we have the political will strong enough to do it?