Big Brother or No Big Deal?

I suppose it's inevitable. Rhuthun/Ruthin joining the CCTV revolution, that is. There've always been individual cameras in or outside some premises, perhaps more than we realise, but there's been little in public areas.

And then along comes this little piece of kit, on the left, which found its way onto a lamp post ahead, I think, of this year's Top Dre. It's the first in the town itself. It looks temporary and I suspect that the antennae mean that it transmits very locally, perhaps to a police van, when needed. The police will always press for as many powers and as they can. There's a similar and newly positioned camera opposite Birch House on Hen Lôn Parcwr, which just happens to be the Venue of the V2 discothèque.

Recently installed is a more permanent array of cameras at the entrance to Lôn Parcwr, off the Northern Relief Road. It looks like four cameras, care of Ruthin Business Watch. It joins the cameras already on the industrial estate and at Lôn Cae Bricks.

And, may be, the police need CCTV, following the revelation a week ago that crime detection rates are sliding (when they were once good) as the police concentrates on violent rather than "everyday" crime. Yet, we know from "Balance your Bobbies", the police authority website that asks residents the impossible question as to which crime they feel is the most significant, that people are concerned as much about dangerous drivers as they are theft & burglary.

When the subject of CCTV in Rhuthun/Ruthin cropped up (in 2008), no one commented, either for or against. Do readers still feel neutral about the subject? Can CCTV help combat crime? Act as a deterrent? Is it a necessary evil? Or an unnecessary intrusion?

Personally, I think it's a very sad reflection on a minority of Rhuthun's population. To think, 25 years ago, you hardly needed to lock your front doors. Now we have a camera adjacent to the Square.

The above results from Balance your Bobbies are aggregated over the Denbighshire & Conwy rural area, from June 2011. Compare this to the results we published in December 2010 for Rhuthun only.