NEWSLETTER - Time and the Need for Speed

From our recent newsletter.......

So your case may have video evidence...
Time and the Need for Speed

You must make every effort to identify this material quickly as it is only likely to be available for a very short period from the date of the recording, this may be as little as the following few hours  or as long as possibly a month, before it is recorded over.

You will need to contact the controller of the CCTV system immediately by telephone or go to the location to arrange for the material to be secured before being overwritten and lost forever. Some makes of Digital Video Recorder (DVR) have the ability to securely archive parts of the recording but many don’t or the members of staff do not know how to carry out that function. Some systems are still using video tapes and these will be reused at some point and the images recorded over.

So if you had to go and seize CCTV material right now would you know what to do?

Many organisations have a policy on how to seize CCTV material, have you read it? Like all other forms of evidence if this material is seized incorrectly it may diminish its worth to the investigation and possibly its evidential merit and in the worst case be inadmissible.

There are a couple of Home Office publications with some very useful advice ‘First Responders Protocol’ and  ‘Retrieval of Video Evidence and Production of Working Copies from Digital CCTV Systems v2.0’ Publication No. 66/08. (Following a recent revamp of the HOSDB site these are now hidden in an archive but click on the titles to view them.)

I would recommend that every person that may be asked to obtain video evidence carries a copy of the "First Responders Protocol" or similar as it is a great aide memoir, although you may want to add some notes from my articles.

I would suggest that many of the existing policies and publications do not include all of the information that you should obtain to help you or your colleagues in making the best use of the material in a subsequent investigation. I would also like to expand on the various points in the two publications and add a few that will ensure that the material can be used more effectively. Please always refer to your organisations policy on seizing video evidence, if it has one.

Over the next few issues of DemuxDispatches I will be exploring one or two of these points plus some of my own to help you maximise any useful material to assist your case if you would like to receive a copy of the newsletter please complete the form on the right at the top of this page.

Read my article “Time and the Need for Speed” here

If you have any comments on this post, the article or on seizing video evidence in general please contact me or make a comment below, thanks.