Brigg Town Council is to ask North Lincolnshire Council for an explanation over why the CCTV cameras in the town centre apparently failed to deliver footage of a metal sign being stolen, in broad daylight, from outside Scalini's chippie. The North Lincs authority oversees the CCTV system.
However, as town councillors debated the issue at Monday's monthly meeting, Town Clerk Jeanette Woollard sought to put town centre crime into perspective. Perhaps we should now call Jeanette long-serving Town Clerk. However, her point was "We don't get the level of complaints we used to in the town centre." She recalled when first taking over the post, Monday often involved her reporting shop windows broken and other incidents from the weekend. "That's not the case anymore," she stressed.
Brigg Blog reported the Scalini sign theft at length from the Brigg Neighbourhood Policing Panel's recent quarterly meeting, when the issue was raised by Ken Harrison, who pressed for an answer. However, the matter was debated again by the Town Council after Coun Tom Glossop made reference to it in his update of the Policing Panel meeting, which he chaired.
Coun Mike Campion said the CCTV cameras were never going to offer 100 per cent coverage of the town centre. However, he suspected that cutting back the trees to give a better view would not prove very popular with some people in the town.
Coun Julian Kidd wanted to know whether North Lincolnshire Council had carried out an audit of the effectiveness of the cameras.
Coun Ann Eardley questioned whether staff manning the CCTV control centre in Scunthorpe had sufficient local knowledge of Brigg "and know all the nooks and crannies where people can hide."
Coun Chris Pope said efforts should be made to identify any "blind spots" - such as alleyways.
Coun James Truepenny suggested: "It's just something we will have to keep monitoring."
It was agreed the Town Clerk should write to North Lincolnshire Council, requesting an explanation about the incident involving the shop sign.
As previously mentioned.....following the police liaison meeting on the Tuesday evening.....a CCTV video repair van was seen under the camera at about 9.30am on the following Friday.
ReplyDeleteAccording, to the contractors, 'the camera wasn't working' and had been despatched to repair it.
At the time, I brought Cllr Penny Smith's (just happened to be passing) attention to the repair van, but she had already noticed it.
Following the Brigg TC meeting this Tuesday, it was evident from various councillors' comments that the it is very easy to confuse the various CCTV camera locations.
I have suggested previously that the cameras should be numbered, so when referring to a specific CCTV location one is not confusing the camera near Scalini's (above the adjoining Chinese takeaway)with the CCTV above Ladbrooks - both covering the Market Place.
An 'A'-frame is an everyday object about Brigg - but it cost Stavros, Scalini's proprietor £300, so we are not talking about a small fry when it comes to money.
When the 'A'-frame went missing in that one-hour window on a Thursday's market day, the camera pointing dirfectly at the site.
After reporting the the matter to the police, the camera was seen for a number of days pointing towards the brickwork near its own fixings on the Chinese takeway - presumably inspecting the state of the pointing!