Perth Voice Interactive

THE cruddy picture quality of Bayswater council’s CCTV camaras has been hindering efforts to identify rapscallions, but the rolling project to upgrade them could take another three years to complete. 

Bayswater has about 270 cameras across the city but they don’t always get a clear picture of crime, with issues stemming from blurry low resolution images and poor night vision.

One ratepayer who’s raised concerns about the camera quality several times is Noranda resident Harry Bouzidas.

At the final council meeting of the year Mr Bouzidas addressed council saying: “I brought this matter up earlier this year, and I believe that we’ve had problems with the resolution of the cameras and the ineffectiveness of the cameras. 

“And I’m wondering whether I can have an update as to where we are now compared to where we were at the beginning of the year, please.”

Bayswater’s community services director Bianca Sandri said they’d been undertaking an audit of all cameras across the past five months to put out a tender to upgrade the CCTV network. The council assigned an extra $240,000 investment in the CCTV network in this year’s budget, and the tender is scheduled to be advertised in January.

Mr Bouzidas pressed the question about when the blurry cameras would be replaced.

Ms Sandri said: “What I anticipate, as all our cameras require replacement, it won’t happen in one hit, so we will go through and prioritise the areas for replacement and the infrastructure, so we hope to have it fulfilled within 12 months, but it may be smoothed over 24 to 36 months depending on the gravitas of the work that’s required.”

A slightly astonished Mr Bouzidas said: “So two to three years on the outside?”

While the fixed cameras have had issues with identifying nogoodniks, the council’s trial of portable trailer-mounted CCTV systems have had some deterrence value. 

According to a council quarterly report, installing a portable camera system at the BMX pump track at Claughton Reserve successfully cut down on troublemakers and vandals. 

Portable CCTV was also deployed at Lighting Park, a hotspot for electrical cable theft, and there’ve been no instances of cable theft since.

by DAVID BELL