There’s a bit in the BBC’s Responder series where Martin Freeman’s character, Chris Carson, wants to access some CCTV recordings to help him with an investigation. So he walks over to a bank of desks inside the police station from where he can access footage from all across Liverpool. He punches the camera number he wants in and gets instant access to the recording in high definition. This made me wonder: is this how the CCTV cameras on Cross Flatts Park work? Well, in a word, no. Not for the first time, television has seriously misled us about how the world works! This is the reality…
My 11-year-old son was robbed of his scooter by two older boys on Cross Flatts Park at the start of April this year. He’s a switched-on lad and was able to give a detailed report via the West Yorkshire Police website within an hour of the incident, including descriptions of the culprits and where they ran off to. WYP emailed back within 15 mins to say the crime had been given a high priority and someone would be in touch asap – it was after all a robbery, which is more serious than a theft as it involves the use of force, and it was a robbery of a child by other children.
Within an hour of that email I got a phone call from an officer. “We’re too stacked up to do anything about it now” he said, “I’ll book you in to make a statement in a few days.” No longer such a priority it seemed.
So we went down to the HQ to make a statement a few days after the incident. The officer was really nice and my son felt it was a positive experience overall apart from the bit where he had to decide if he was prepared to go to court. I asked about the CCTV on the park. The officer didn’t know if it was working or who owned the equipment. So I did some digging myself afterwards and asked my local councillor if he could help escalate, which he did. This is what I found out:
The Cross Flatts Park CCTV cameras are operated by LeedsWatch which is part of Leeds City Council. According to a Freedom Of Interest request from January 2024, there are 398 public space CCTV cameras in Leeds operated by LeedsWatch who employ 78 people. The LeedsWatch CCTV costs for the financial year 2022/23 were £3.3 million. (LeedsWatch may also generate income by providing services to private businesses, but I don’t have that information).
LCC told me that “Leeds City Council have an information sharing agreement with West Yorkshire Police which allows them access to CCTV for a wide variety of reasons which are compliant with GDPR including “prevention and detection of crime”. The requests need to contain enough detail and realistic time frames to allow the footage to be found, this has to be proportionate to the reason for the request and the circumstances can vary.”
To access the footage, “West Yorkshire Police complete a simple form which is emailed to the Council. Once processed, footage can be collected by the officer or it will be taken to the evidence store at Elland Road, this is in the process of being replaced by a cloud-based system.” – so definitely not like in the BBC’s Responder.
Citizens can actually request footage themselves via the council website – I tried, but was refused, which is usually the case on the grounds of protecting other people’s data, which is fair enough. Footage is only kept for 31 days so you, and the police, can’t hang around.
LCC confirmed the 3 cameras mentioned in a South Leeds Life story from 2017 are all operational, but can anyone spot the camera “below the sports courts” because I can’t!
On the 29 May, almost 2 months after the robbery, WYP advised me that there was no CCTV of the incident. They never came back to clarify if they had received footage from LeedsWatch and it didn’t cover the robbery, or whether LeedsWatch had not provided the footage, even though I was advised by the Council that footage had been put to one side for WYP. I’m also not clear if the CCTV would have been requested at all if I hadn’t escalated the issue.
So, in conclusion, the CCTV on the park does work, but it takes a long time for WYP to access it. Maybe the process and the timeframe is putting the police off even bothering?
It’s sad that something as serious as a robbery of child in a public park in broad daylight has become acceptable. These events add up and deter people from using the park. They give Beeston a bad rep. The culprits, encouraged by not being caught this time, might go on to do even worse things – it’s not helping them either in the long term.
To finish on a positive note though, my son moved on quickly from the events. We’re a scooter down, but thankfully no lasting damage.
This post was written by Park User (name withheld)
Photo: Shutterstock
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