OTHER ISSUE 3 ARTICLES:

BEWARE ARMED AND DANGEROUS

ANGER IN KIRKBY

LOCAL ROUND UP

LIVERPOOL BUSINESS ELITE SPYING ON US ALL

The self-named Citysafe Partnership (CSP) has just been given the go ahead by the home office to continue it’s monitoring of the coming and going of people in the city centre of Liverpool. The plan to upgrade the present 28 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and install a further 71 cameras will cost an extra £1.9milion. The CSP are so proud of their plans that they brag about the fact that these cameras are so powerful that they can read a newspaper headline from 250 feet. Not only that, In the near future, many camera systems will incorporate parabolic microphones to detect conversations on the street, in parks, in shops and in restaurants. And sophisticated software already on the market will allow the cameras to analyse the movement and activities of individuals or groups in public places. Yet their claims that the further intensification of surveillance cameras helps police detect criminal activity and make the streets safer are not backed up with any evidence, in fact all major research in this area points to the contrary.
A 2-year study carried out by Professor Jason Ditton from Sheffield University concluded that: “What we have been able to show is that CCTV didn’t reduce crime - if anything it has increased - and it didn’t reduce fear of crime. If anything there was a slight increase in anxiety.” And another recent study carried out by the Scottish Centre for Criminology found that ‘virtually all claims of crime prevention are false. Crimes of passion, crimes involving drugs and alcohol, and actions by professional criminals are not prevented by the cameras’. One study by Brighton University’s Health and Social Policy Research Centre flatly concluded that ‘there is no evidence they are having any deterrent effect on criminals’. In fact, the report says the incidence of violence and disorder in the areas covered by the cameras is on the increase. So why bother with CCTV you may ask?
According to researchers at John Moores University the major reason for the installation of CCTV is to protect the profits and interests of Businesses in Liverpool. And CSPs claims that their major aims are to protect people, in particular women, are a myth. Anyone who has seriously studied crime knows, violent crime does not go on in the city centre, and a better suggestion would be that if CSP are interested in helping the public, forget about CCTV and provide something more useful like adequate Toilets, Crèche facilities and cheap reliable transport.
The CSP is part of the Liverpool City Centre Partnership (LCCP) and is loosely connected to local government. They consist of Shop Owners, Businessmen, Private Security Firms and the Police i.e. the Liverpool Elite. With the help of the local media they were involved in the process to promote Liverpool as a business (rich) friendly city, not a city to benefit all it’s inhabitants; but to attract those with the money to spend and exclude those without. Their major public relations policies were to present Liverpool as ‘A Maritime City, ‘A Pool of Talent’ and ‘Local And Proud’ and to get away from it being a city were people are prepared to stand up for themselves. Thus a city where business people can be protected when exploiting and forcing its local inhabitants (us) into non-unionised, cheap labour, short-term contract jobs. CCTV while protecting business interests also does the double whammy of promoting the idea that it is we the people who need to be watched because we are the criminals.
Experts in Criminology know that most major crimes go on behind closed doors, be that drug related, corporate or domestic. It is a myth to believe that - serious crime goes on in the main shopping area of Liverpool - major crime goes on, in the boardrooms of businesses, in the clubs and in the police stations of the city. We don’t have cameras in the back of police vans, monitoring the criminal activity of police officers; we don’t have them in the offices of gangsters and the business elite who run this city. You can be sure if that was the case, and we could watch them, they wouldn’t be raving about CCTV. In fact nationally there is growing evidence that CCTV is not solely being used to spy on people shopping in the city centre. And the recent revelation that one of the top securities firms in the city was run by a man with a history of gun running and drug dealing, should give us furthur cause for mistrust. In 1996 a Brentwood man complained that images of his attempted suicide had been broadcast on national television. One camera operator in Mid Glamorgan has been convicted on more than 200 counts of using cameras to spy on women, and then making obscene phone calls to them from the control room. The magazine New Scientist reports that one leisure centre has placed cameras in a women’s changing room, and was being monitored by men. Other research shows that CCTV is being used to overtly discriminate against certain groups. One camera operator in Burnley told a Granada documentary “people mainly with shirts and ties are OK. Most people you can tell just by looking at them”. Another said, “I tell by the hair”. A recent report by Hull University highlighted endemic discrimination against blacks, gays, minorities and young people. They can also be used to monitor demonstrations or political groups in the city centre.
One of the offshoots of Liverpool’s CitySafe Partnership is a group called CrimeAlert, which consists of the local business elite who meet monthly with undercover Police officers and discuss who should be targeted for surveillance. We know organisations like the Big Issue have been infiltrated; we know, like elsewhere it is young people generally who fall under the suspicious eye - it’s only a matter of time before new groups like People Not Profit are targeted. Because a high priority of People Not Profit is to expose the sham of rip-off high street stores and corruption in Liverpool. We know that Citysafe Partnership, CrimeAlert or Liverpool City Centre Partnership, are not really interested in this city, or its inhabitants, they are interested in taking as much money off us as they can and putting it into their pockets – and grabbing any money coming into the city, (supposedly geared towards the interests of its inhabitants) and putting that into their pockets. They are transforming the city centre into a consumer playground – an exclusive space for money and people of the ‘right sort’. CCTV is not about protecting all our interests; it’s about protecting their interests at the expense of reducing our right to go were we want in our city; it’s about excluding individuals and groups they don’t like. These developments reinforce the power of business to shape our city and the people in it as ‘good consumers’. All of this is backed by CCTV, private security firms and police officers – watching and controlling us. The city centre should not belong to them; it should belong to us, all of us.