If it happened today- Cameras

[kensei]

I was just letting my mind wander trying to come up with a new topic, and was thinking of my visit to London last year in which I was accosted by two polite but insistent police officers in Mitre Square who wanted to know why I was shooting video in proximity to the security cameras there. It's widely known that London is filled with them these days and may in fact be the most surveiled city on Earth. Obviously, if Kate Eddowes' murder took place today it would be captured on video for all to see and the face of the Ripper would be known.

So I was thinking- what if the entire Ripper episode was to happen today? Just how all-pervasive are the cameras? Are they really everywhere? Is there one in such an out of the way site as the old Buck's Row? I guess I could see them being in the Chapman and Kelly sites as security for the car parks there, and the Stride site also because of the school. But the Tabram site as it is today, I have trouble imagining why there would be one there. Basically my question is- if it happened today at the same sites, would every murder be caught on camera? And further, does London's video surveilance system work like a bank's, where there is a clear record to go and look at in the aftermath of a crime, or are there rooms full of people somewhere staring at monitors round the clock waiting for things to happen so police can be dispatched while the crime is still in progress?

The movie "Dirty War" a few years ago, about terrorists setting off a dirty bomb in London, certainly put the cameras to good use in tracking the bombers as the event was happening. And I believe that if Jack the Ripper was to occur today he would be caught one way or another. But surely there must still be criminals aplenty in London that go uncaught despite the cameras?

[Limehouse]

Well, there may not be a camera in every location, but there would be sufficient cameras for the killer to be 'tracked' between cameras. I believe this is what happened in the case of the Ipswich killer.

[Mascara & Paranoia]

The Ripper would've been caught on a good few cameras, maybe not at every crime scene, but on more than enough to get a conviction. There is absolutely nothing Machiavellian about him. Almost anyone with a mind to could've 'accomplished' what he did in those days.

[Lemonburst]

Well, there may not be a camera in every location, but there would be sufficient cameras for the killer to be 'tracked' between cameras. I believe this is what happened in the case of the Ipswich killer.

I think it was a match on the DNA database that initially led the police to Steve Wright, CCTV footage subsequently confirmed his car was in the area at the time of the victims disappearance. Quite possibly a similar combination would lead to the arrest of the ripper if he was carrying out his crimes today.

[kensei]

Any of you Londoners out there know if your city's extensive camera system is monitored in real time, or if the footage is only used as a useful tool after the fact? I imagine this could be different in different areas. Obviously, pull out a weapon in front of Parliament and you will be gang tackled in seconds, but would something like a fight on Whitechapel Road have the nearest police car dispatched to it immediately because of the cameras?

I remember on my first visit to England in 2004, the day I arrived the London papers had a story about a fatal stabbing on a tube platform the night before in which the victim had lain there for some time before being found, and there were no suspects. Are there not cameras at every tube station? If so, in that case they were obviously not being monitored round the clock.

[KatBradshaw]

Certainly in the programme 'Whitechapel' they used cameras to track the modern day Ripper. Now I do realise that this is fiction but it is backed up with the case of the Ipswich Strangler. None of these cameras were used in real time though and I would actually be very scared to live in a world that was.

[kensei]

I would too- knowing you were constantly being surveiled by Big Brother would be no way to live, and the whole idea of how many cameras are watching us these days gives me the creeps.

But on the other hand, we just had a murder-for-hire occur where I live in which a widdowed man with a 3-year-old daughter was beaten to death with a hammer and it turned out his late wife's father had hired a handyman to do it in an attempt for his family to win custody of the child, and the case was solved almost entirely by security camera footage. It's frustrating when something you're leery of ends up doing something good.

[KatBradshaw]

Yes it is!! LOL Takes the wind out of our sails a bit. I remember watching Minority Report and thinking that world seemed so awful, kinda feels like we are heading that way though.