NSI and Facewatch join forces to reduce crime with CCTV
NSI and Facewatch have announced today that they intend to work closely together in a powerful partnering arrangement which will help transform the use of CCTV by moving it into the digital world of online reporting.
NSI provides certification schemes audited against internationally recognised standards for the security and fire sectors. NSI will be adding the Facewatch online police crime reporting service to their training offer and will be encouraging approved companies to roll out Facewatch to their end user customers.
Facewatch training and support will be provided by NSI to any company wishing to use Facewatch as part of their CCTV security solution. It will also be possible, using the accurate key performance indicators from Facewatch to establish how effectively systems are operating to provide good evidence for police services which will help to drive up standards.
The Facewatch system is already used by over 7,000 businesses across the UK. The system allows crimes such as shoplifting and personal theft to be reported instantly to the police online. Nine UK police services have already signed up to use the system and many others are considering its adoption. CCTV footage and suspect images can be uploaded directly to Facewatch and provide the police and other businesses using Facewatch with accurate and accessible data to help improve the conviction rate and to deal with repeat offenders.
Until now CCTV has been a poor relation to the forensic approach taken by the police in the use of fingerprints and DNA. This is mainly because of the physical difficulties surrounding the collection, analysis and storage of CCTV footage. Furthermore, when poor quality CCTV imagery is provided, often in a format that cannot be viewed clearly by the police without special software, the effectiveness of the capability is greatly weakened. Many cases fail in court due to basic issues such as DVD’s not playing or disks getting lost.
The partnership seeks to address these weaknesses and NSI’s approved companies can put themselves at the forefront of this transformation and ensure that they are fully ready to take advantage of the future business opportunities that it brings.
NSI will ensure that business users are given fully developed training in order to ensure that they are completely confident in using the Facewatch system. It also strengthens their aim of improving CCTV quality and standards of service provided by NSI Alarm Receiving Centres and systems installers.
Jeff Little, Chief Executive NSI
“NSI is delighted to be working with Facewatch to ensure that this new and innovative crime reduction and reporting system is managed, delivered and fully exploited. The new NSI training and e-learning suite for Facewatch will be the catalyst which ensures that companies will be able to provide a system to their customers that will result in lower crime levels and will also help to improve the quality of CCTV evidence provided to the police services.”
Simon Gordon, Chairman, Facewatch Ltd
“We are extremely pleased to be working with the NSI to improve standards of crime reporting and intelligence sharing. It is essential to our national roll out plans that Facewatch can be successfully integrated into business of any size or complexity and that the quality of the CCTV system is such that the evidence uploaded to Facewatch is useable by police and the courts.”
More information: www.facewatch.co.uk