Crime crackdown: The Northern Territory’s 1000+ CCTV network and what it does

There are more than 1000 CCTV cameras in the Northern Territory and they’re monitored day and night. See inside this massive network and how its used to tackle crime.

From a windowless office at the Peter McAulay Centre in Berrimah, a team of about 30 civilian employees provide 24-hour monitoring of the Territory’s extensive network of closed circuit television.

The Joint Emergency Services Command Centre is the nerve-centre for Territory police where calls from the public are responded to and CCTV is monitored and reviewed.

It’s where the rubber hits the road for millions of dollars invested by the federal and Territory governments over more than a decade of installing CCTV to make cities, towns and communities safer.

With recent upgrades to units, there’s now more than 1000 cameras in Darwin, Palmerston, Alice Springs, Katherine, Tennant Creek and Wadeye.

By the end of the year there will be about 1200.

In addition, there’s 20 mobile CCTV units (called ‘trailers’ by police) across the main Territory towns as well.

Although they won’t say it publicly, if police had their way and budgets were unlimited, every street in every town would have full CCTV coverage.

Monitoring CCTV vision at Peter McAulay centre in Darwin. Picture: Esther Linder.

As it is, police are fully using the tools they already have and to identify potential hot spots where installation of cameras will make a difference.

Up to eight operators at a time watch 32 monitors fixed to walls, as well as three desktop monitors per operator.

They can also seek out specific vision requested by police after a crime.

Acting Sergeant Dale Motter-Barnard is with Strike Force Trident, which investigates incidents requiring a rapid response such as property crime, youth crime, robberies said the infrastructure is “invaluable”.

“We use it pretty much on a daily basis,” he said. “It assists in our investigation, strengthens our prosecution files and it gives us the ability to track offenders in real time and make decisions based on the information they provide.”

To illustrate the effectiveness of CCTV, police have released vision of four youths breaking into Casuarina Shopping Village early Saturday morning.

Monitoring CCTV vision at Peter McAulay centre in Darwin. Picture: Esther Linder.

“A call was made to police, CCTV operators were able to get eyes on the area quickly and they were able to get vision of the offenders leaving the scene,” Sergeant Motter-Barnard said. “From there, Trident and general duties members are able to get in contact directly with the CCTV operator and receive real time information as to the movements of the offenders.

“Decisions were able to be made in relation to where units needed to be, cordons were able to be put in place and as a result of that we were able to make several apprehensions.”

The breathtaking efficiency of the four arrests that followed would have been impossible without CCTV.

“It would have been extremely difficult. Given its location, there are many different directions that the offenders could have run off to and especially at night-time with limited people around we’d have no idea where they’d go.”

CCTV unit manager Michael Maclean said vision could be matched to a call within five seconds of the call being taken.

“It’s invaluable,” he said. “We can have eyes on within five seconds, we can update the job so if an incident starts in a particular location we can update members en route before they get there to advise them of the new location and provide details of the actual incident for when they do arrive.”

NT Police CCTV unit manager at Peter McAulay Centre Michael Maclean. Picture: Esther Linder.

During the day there may be five people monitoring screens with the number growing to eight after the sun goes down. Busiest period is generally between 10pm and 2am.

“There’s lots of break-ins that are happening that we’re seeing and there’s issues going on where we have cameras with anti-social behaviour and this is where we try to provide footage for prosecution purposes,” Mr Maclean said.

Speakers are a feature on the new generation cameras, offering an additional deterrence device.

“The speakers get used quite often, especially on trailers, because that we can let people know that they are under surveillance. As soon as the speakers go on they all look up so they look at the cameras and we’ve got you,” Mr Maclean said.

And about the vision he and his team watch day and night.

“You can’t unsee some things,” he said.

Originally published as Crime crackdown: The Northern Territory’s 1000+ CCTV network and what it does