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Reporting on CCTV surveillance events

What constitutes a reportable offence for a CCTV operation? We tend to associate CCTV with detecting the major crime incidents that we are concerned about happening on a site. However, the reality is that CCTV control rooms get involved in a range of activities from picking up production process issues, health and safety, procedural violations, general misconduct, minor offences as well as the major crime issues we are faced with.

Many of these events may not mean anything in terms of the core function of security. However, for the production department, the failure to report a major equipment failure or spillage that initially looks inconsequential could result in the loss of millions in the production process if it develops into a full scale failure or major spill.

Given these kinds of conditions, what should CCTV operators be spending their time on and reporting about? We need to consider that any logging and reporting is taking time out of active surveillance. However, getting an audit trail is a key part in safeguarding not just security, but possibly the whole company from getting into a situation of harm. I remember one newspaper story of an ambulance that arrived later than expected at a major company after being called some time before. Only the fact that the call and subsequent follow up ones had been fully logged and duly processed allowed the company to escape the blame for what outsiders initially attributed as a unconcerned failure to provide service.

The reduction of the New York crime rate and the concept of zero tolerance has been extensively written about as a solution for crime over the past few years. The approach has been attributed to William Bratton, the NYC Police Commissioner appointed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in 1994. The theory is that not dealing with small issues will create an atmosphere where more serious offences will flourish, and over time, individuals who feel that they may get away with minor offences will go on to commit more serious offences.

Certainly this philosophy is also relevant to the CCTV context. Undoubtedly, criminals actively test and push boundaries or rules and procedures in order to create more opportunities or 'space' for them to steal. Where these breaches get reported to management and not acted on, they eventually become ignored. The extent to which criminals can then perform what formally would have been 'transgressions' but are now regarded as normal practice creates a far more conducive environment to theft. However, in many cases when security reacts by trying to impose more discipline on the working environment or even production process, they are seen as the bad guys - becoming a barrier to getting the production work done efficiently.

What kind of CCTV reporting should therefore be done, and to what extent should it include all these other types of events? We need to start off with a clear framework of what is reported on and how this information is conveyed to the relevant stakeholders. This may include a feature for stepping up the priority of reported issues - for example, repeat issues get pushed up the priority list until they are effectively dealt with. There is a need to generate reporting systems that are useful to security, but also that will be informative for management - producing data that can give insight into their own operations and the worth of CCTV in viewing these.

* We need to optimise how logging of incidents is done and how these are treated. These days, an electronic logging system that distributes relevant messages to appropriate people through the network appears to be the only feasible option. The traditional occurrence book has never been a major source of information that can be constructively used but rather a safeguard for security to fall back on to show they have done something.

* Security personnel need to look seriously at what they report on and what gets conveyed to others. In the zero tolerance philosophy, even the smallest aspects get included. This can lead to information fatigue and managers not taking results seriously. There is a real danger that it becomes just another administration issue generated by security. People need to value the information that comes to them.

* Managers need to accept that they must deal with issues that are sent their way and that these reports or logs contain meaningful content. In this sense, security departments need to contract with managers on what gets sent, what acknowledgement is received, and action that is then taken to rectify this. The performance evaluation of those managers then needs to include how they have responded to this reporting. In this way, it needs to become part of the culture of how things are done.

* CCTV operators need to be activity managed in terms of what kind of information they are including in the systems. There is the potential when generating so much information, that it becomes too much to handle. This does have some implications for the performance management of both operators and supervisors. How one rates the nature of information produced by operators has to be considered ie, it has to have some kind of weighting for quality as well as quantity.

* There needs to be a way of integrating and analysing all the information produced. This kind of database is a rich source of information for intelligence analysts. Too many systems store information in a format that is virtually irretrievable and only then by people with specialist skills.

The efficient reporting of information that matters and its effective use could potentially transform the application of security in an enterprise. More importantly, it can transform the relationship between security and the various clients they have in the organisation and enhance the position of security as a service provider.

Craig Donald

Dr Craig Donald is a human factors specialist in security and CCTV. He is a director of Leaderware, which provides instruments for the selection of CCTV operators, X-ray screeners and other security personnel in major operations around the world. He also runs CCTV Surveillance Skills and Body Language, and Advanced Surveillance Body Language courses for CCTV operators, supervisors and managers internationally, and consults on CCTV management. He can be contacted on 011 787 7811 or [email protected]

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