In the last two financial years, the City has added 52 more cameras to its strategic surveillance unit, that helped detect an additional 1 500 incidents.

The City’s CCTV system continues to deliver good results.

In the last financial year, operators monitoring the system detected just over 15 000 incidents.

This is up by 1 509 from the previous financial year.

During this time, the number of cameras also increased by 52, from 783 in 2019/20, to 835 in 2020/21.

The Metro Police Department’s Strategic Surveillance Unit monitors five incident categories, as outlined in the table below:

‘There is huge emphasis on the role of CCTV cameras as a tool to fight crime, and while this is the case, it is also important to highlight the other uses of this technology, like detecting fires, motor vehicle accidents and other incidents where lives or property are potentially at risk, and dispatching the correct resources to the exact location of the incident. Then of course there is the potential for it to be used in aiding the prosecutions authority, or the police in their investigations. As we expand our network, we have also started seeing the benefit of CCTV surveillance in helping to address cable theft and other critical infrastructure. It offers a range of possibilities and greatly enhances the capabilities of enforcement agencies, our emergency and rescue personnel, and more,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, Alderman JP Smith.

In the last financial year, the highest number of arrests made courtesy of CCTV detection, were:

66 for drug-related offences

26 for theft

25 for cable theft

22 for theft out of motor vehicle

22 related to protest action/public violence

Both periods under review identified November as the month, and Friday as the day with the highest number of incidents, while most incidents were recorded between 15:00 and 21:00 daily.

‘We’ve noted a significant drop in detections overnight. This is likely due to the impact of the lockdown and the various curfews that have been in place since March last year. Our officials analyse these trends and incidents not only out of interest, but also because it is very useful to our enforcement services as it can help determine deployment patterns, and the number of resources to deploy. What is also encouraging is the increase in arrests related to cable theft. There were only three such arrests two years ago, and in the last year, we increased this number eight-fold,’ added Alderman Smith.

Source: City Of Cape Town