CCTV fails when it might be inconvenient to Police.

OK, so there was a pursuit. Thanks

All we wanted to know.

Add to last I read another account of what happened in the paper yesterday when the bloke said Police were 5-10 seconds behind the other vehicle. Some people could cover the distance from London Cct to where she got hit running in 10 seconds.

G

Serve and protect is crap that is dished out on American television shows. It is an expectation that is generated through that medium.

If I was to believe everything that happened on television I would be getting fingerprints off a woolen jumper and having the bad guys caught within the hour.

Then given our population size compared to Mount Thomas the Police would be having rolling shootouts with criminals conducting well organised gold heists through the bus interchange every second day.

Then people jump up and down and say “we pay your bills.” So does every other bugger who pays taxes. Including me – so I tend to look at it as I pay my own bills.

I would have expected better of an educated person like yourself JB than to come up with a comment like that one.

Its the type of crap that is generally said by some pissed idiot that has just got locked up for being a knob in public on the sauce.

No Police ever FORCED a high speed pursuit. Most people just pull over to the left side of the road and stop the car when hailed by Police. Others CHOSE to run…

Police work with the tools they are given if that happens to be a system that ‘an year 11 comp sci student would be ashamed of’ then that is what they deal with.

And I am guessing you didn’t pick the sarcasm when I was talking about the cameras from Tandy.

G

BTW, too much Law and Order for some, ’serve and protect’ only appears on the sides of American Police cars

I’ve got some bad news for you VG, but that’s the standard the public expect from you, and while you may hold us in contempt we actually pay your bills.

Keep up that attitude and the victorian police force keeps looking better and better next time the contract is up for renewal.

El. given the competence, compassion, and honesty displayed by the AFP so far do you realise just how little an internal investigation reassures?

The issue the police want to talk about is the kids in the car. People have been charged, well done.

The issue the public is talking about is why the police keep changing their stories in a highly suspicious manner and have an evidence retention program (in the form of the CCTV storage), which a year 11 comp sci student would be ashamed of, that has manifestly failed.

FORCING them to go through a shared zone?

Ridiculous.

I think some of you need to take off the tin-foil hats and realise that an investigation IS taking place into this tragedy.

BTW, too much Law and Order for some, ‘serve and protect’ only appears on the sides of American Police cars

The car could have proceeded straight ahead towards Northbourne but turned right, of its own volition, into the interchange. The only way to ‘force’ it into the interchange would have been to ram it into it, or put up a road block to force it to do so. It should be pretty clear to everyone that neither happened (unless of course they managed to set up a road block in the 5 secs it took for the offending vehicle to travel from o/s the Assembly building to the interchange turn off)

Actually, it is interesting to notice the absence of the words “Serve and Protect” from the police cars, signs, etc.

Johnboy is right, we shouldn’t need to work for them to understand them. It’s not exactly democratic for the police to not be accoutable for thier actions, and the only way they can be accoutable is if we understand their investigational procedures.

Sure, they had the job of bringing the juvenile car theives to justice, but forcing them to go through a “shared zone” (according to the signs) at high speed would be irresponsible, and that is why we need the footage, the allegation is there and it needs to be openly investigated.

If they didn’t force a high-speed chase through a shared zone, then it was obviously entirely the fault of the car theives. If, on the other hand, the police were in hot pursuit, then they are at least partially to blame for the accident.

Serve and protect eh?

Your last statement just confirms to me what many have thought all along.

And you wonder why you got a smack in the mouth

VG if the police response to every question is that we need to be recruited ourselves to understand the system, then the system is broke and maybe it’s time to get rid of the lot of you.

Any issues of responsibility in this scenario lie with people driving cars, not the unavailability of video evidence.

A bit of perspective would be handy, as well as a working knowledge of the oversight of Police internal investigations.

The sky is falling as well

You say the fault was logged on 27 July?

If so why was it only admitted that the footage wouldn’t be available on 3 August?

Here’s what the ACT Policing media release had to say:

interrogation of the CCTV system has found the footage to be unavailable

So you’re telling us no-one is responsible, but the story keeps changing and we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads and leave it to the people who keep changing their story to get it straight and give us a pat on the head?

You are a trusting soul VG.

The CCTV system as it is was given to the Police by the Govt. Complete morons or destroying evidence? Well if the system is owned and maintained by the ACT Govt, based on maintenance requests given by the Police who would you suggest is at fault when a recording error was reported on the 27th and has not been acted on?

I would suggest that fault lies with the body responsible for maintaining the cameras which everyone should have worked out by now is not the Police. That is the system that was given to them by the Govt. Not trying to obviate responsibility here but if they were told that it wasnt working on the 27th and didnt fix it then its not the Police’s fault.

Have as much say as you like in it, but when it comes to sledging professionalism in operational matters, well I dont say a word when it comes to IT things, but nigh on everyone seems to be able to tell Police how they should be doing a better job.

I think we are going nowhere with this argument anyway and I’ll just agree to disagree from now on, unless of course ORL pops up with something non-sensical again.

Here’s hoping Clea makes as full a recovery as she can, and the actual bad guys (the one’s that hit her) are subject to the full extent of the law, but don’t hold your breath on the latter in Canberra

Well ORL this may suprise you: we’re not all cops.

Or “old codgers” for that matter. I’m only 2 years older than you and I still think you’re an idiot.

No VG, I know bugger all.

But even a relative (compared to the real boffins) IT dummy like me knows that the system being described is totally incompetent.

it’s a tough call to decide if our police are complete morons or destroying evidence.

can’t say I take much pleasure from weighing that one up.

and you say i have to join as a recruit if i want any say in this?

JB has got a point. A camera system ostensibly for “public safety” and alledgedly installed at great public expense does not appear to have any logging, back-up or emergency alert system. How and when the police access this system is not the point. The point is, what kind of monkey agreed to a system that a) can stop recording b) take days to fix, c) did not have redundancy in the first place. There would be at least 1000 people in this town who could build a secure reliable, redundant hard drive system so why has it not been done, its not a high tech mystery, its a RAID system and any Mac OS X or Win Server machine can set it up out of the box. That is the unprofessional thing.

Again this is a tragedy. That there is such incompetence surrounding it is astonishing. Just to make it clear, the accusation incompetence is leveled at the people responsible for the implentation, and maintenance of the CCTV system.

Yes JB, how could I forget, you know everything. Please tell me who you are blaming though, the Police who dared to report the fault, or the ACT Govy agency responsible for its repair?

Sorry, its all the ‘unprofessional’ Police’s fault isn’t it. The world will be a bit clearer without the blinkers on

“Canberra’s 12 tandy cameras (with only 8 working at any time) installed by the ACT government and like anything else takes 6 weeks to 12 months to fix as long as the right paperwork is filled out.”

My, that sounds professional.

In my own professional experience you log a fault and it gets fixed or replaced that day. But I guess there are professionals and then there are professionals.

“And as you probably know an emotional person isn’t always the most rational.”

That says it all my friend

I don’t know how many times people have to be told before they get it through their thick skulls. It has been widely reported that the cameras went down on the 27th, which was reported. It is not the Police that fix them up.

Magicians. There are that many people that wouldnt know their ass from their collective elbows regarding policing on this site that its astounding. Armchair experts abound, but none whatsover have a skerrick of knowledge about how policing is done.

Again assumptions that Police were chasing a car through the interchange at 80km/h. Where did that come from. The scuttlebutt from someone’s cousin who knows someone who saw it?

Somebody is going to end up in front of a Court for this offence. Bearing that in mind its not the job of Police to disclose to a curious public every scrap of evidence they have. Its evidence for a court to consider. The one of public opinion can have its shot later.

So many experts about how policing should be done mostly espoused by people who’ve never seen an angry man in their lives. If you want to ‘fix the system up’ you know who to contact to be recruited.

So many of you will look stupid in the wash up from this, I look forward to it

And no body ever answered ANY of the questions that I asked????
That really shits me.

I was referring to me as working. It is hard to believe but I do have a job.

Well how about first hand knowledge VG.
My friend of 10yrs (who I think I can trust a bit more than you guys) was out having a good night with Clea, also a friend, about to cross the road altogether when someone came screaming up the interchange a hit her.

I think that is first hand knowledge and I don’t need to listen to you tell me about credible witnesses etc… when one is my best friend!

I hate the fact that it is personal to me.
It would be lovely if I didn’t know Clea, the incident or how distraught her friends and family are about it but I do.

And yes in the beginning I was mad on here beacause someone (maybe you or tool) told me to pull my head in and get the facts straight before I offer my opinion so I blurted out I knew what happened (not thinking what I was saying and not thinking it was going to be taken so literal cos you are all cops and look at the facts blah, blah, blah) when obviously I didn’t know EVERYTHING only the details of the accident from my friend and what I have read about the rest of it.
But I was so annoyed that someone who doesn’t have a personal conection can tell ME to get the facts straight that I didn’t realise everyone meant the FACTS about the whole blasted thing.

Like who stole the car, their names, parents names, where they were born, who’s car was it, what were the police officers names etc etc….

I am not trying to be an amatuer sluth, I’ll leave that to the AFP,
I am expressing my opinion and it has a bit more emotion in it than most of you. And as you probably know an emotional person isn’t always the most rational.

Thanks JB, saved me saying it.

Ditto.

Oh right VG, the same professionals who take weeks to get basic maintenance done?

The same professionals so unprofessional as to not notice when a system has been down for FOUR days.

The same professionals with no backups, redundancy, alerting, or failover?

Yeah lets trust these same professionals who are such magicians they can follow a car at 80kmph without chasing it.

Yeah VG, wouldn’t want to sound like police media.

Redundancy, failover, and incremental offsite backup is not too much to ask in a system which cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars and is supposed to store sensitive information.

It is a basic requirement and if it hasn’t been met then that is a scandal.

We seem to be hearing that the police are so dysfunctional and incompetent we shouldn’t be surprised or suspicious that evidence has gone missing.

And we should calmly take this intelligence and assume this organisation is competent to investigate itself?

The Minister for Police is responsible for a non-functional and highly expensive system. His silence is deafening.

When the ACTUAL facts of what happened come out there are going to be a lot of people with egg on their faces, and made to look, well, plainly stupid.

Let the professionals investigate it, not amateur sleuths who base their knowledge on 52nd hand hearsay and assumptions

Supposed to be ‘working’? 24/7? Maybe they get the occasional day off.

Dead set, its people like you that make people who are only maybe a tad older than you shudder when they think of what society will be like in 10 years.

One second you affirm something, the next you deny it. Honestly, get your story straight and remember what you have written. You know what’s going on and then next second you don’t know ‘exactly’.

Think about how moronic scaremongering and rumours from people with little actual knowledge of the situation is helping the poor girl this happened to, or her family. Rumours have already done enormous damage in this case.

Lets remember what happened, someone in a stolen car struck an innocent girl on a night out with friends. The police didn’t do it, the cameras certainly didnt do it, it was the juveniles behind the wheel that did it. Any CCTV footage woould only add to the evidence in the package, its not the be all and end all.

If you are going to reduce yourelf to personal invective and meaningless tripe then any further ill-informed comment you care to make becomes moot.

Get you head around it, a true tragedy has occurred here, not a conspiracy concocted by the government or the Police, but a tragedy.

People yelled and screamed when the cameras were installed and now yell and scream when they didn’t work. You can’t have it both ways. Take a second to spare a meaningful thought for Clea and her family instead of proposing rubbish that does nothing to ease the incredible angst they feel at the moment.

Well I love my youthful exuberance!

Some people won’t get the chance to get drunk all the time and have fun.
Or spend their day on this site listening to old police codgers when they are supposed to be “working”.

So I’m grateful for that.

Hey you guys have even opened up my eyes to the other generation, what they think etc….
I may not like it but it’s there.

But I would hardly say I was going off on a tangent and rambling.
I mentioned the UK in reference to people caring about the CCTV footage. I didn’t go off rambling about London bombings.

And I was asking a question about the witnesses.

Anyway, maybe when we are all getting pissed we can spare a thought……

BTW I’d settle for the Police Minister. It’s under his portfolio.

Jazz, if they didn’t they’d be fried and they are very aware of that fact.

G, I support resignations and sackings in this instance because something that has been installed under the ‘premise’ of being there for our ‘safety’ has failed catastrophically.

I don’t really care that it wasn’t working for the last 4 days prior to the incident, what I care about is the fact that it wasn’t working when it was required to be working.

That’s the failure.

you are a bit optomistic aren’t you mael?

I did hear yesterday that London has some 6000 cameras throughout their subway system and are wanting to upgrade to 10,000.

Canberra’s 12 tandy cameras (with only 8 working at any time) installed by the ACT government and like anything else takes 6 weeks to 12 months to fix as long as the right paperwork is filled out.

People were screaming out against the camera’s when they first went in. Now people want them everywhere. I for one feel that if you don’t have anything to hide then you have nothing to worry about with camera’s.

On the other hand. Big conspiracy theory. Calls for resignations and sackings.

Has anyone thought that a system that goes down on the 27th may take a couple of days to fix? Did anyone think that if the cameras were not use between the 27th and early morning of the 30th that maybe nobody noticed that they weren’t working?

Is it a conspiracy that the 10 minutes of code to notify everyone that the camera’s were not working was not installed? If it did notify people do they have the skills to fix it or does it still come back to notifying the outsourced company to come and fix the cameras? Then they still take a couple of days.

Who’s resignation do you people want? The Minister, the CPO, the manager of the company that services the cameras or the bloke in the City Police Station front office when this incident happened?

Take the camera on the corner of Genge St and Bunda St (for those who don’t know its opposite Gus’s. It was removed when the big hole in the ground was dug. Nobody jumped up and down calling for sackings and the like when that camera was taken out. I dare say that no one even noticed or cared to pay attention.

I am quite sure the investigators looking after the case would be quite happy to speak with every person in the interchange, bailey’s corner, braddon who saw what happened that night, regardless of how drunk, on drugs or sober they happened to be.

Johnboy – This story is not getting any weirder. Its still the same – 3 little f@%kers in a stolen car hit a girl in the interchange.

G

ORL, because you’re 21 you have a duty to get drunk every time you can, it’s your job.

We are generally speaking from experience because we’ve all been there before but haven’t yet gotten that old that we’ve forgotten what we used to get up to when we were that young.

If the police had reliable witnesses, they would have put out a press release stating that they were making enquiries from reliable witnesses.

It’s all in the careful wording within police press releases if you can be bothered searching for it…

I’ll write that one off to youthful exuberance and let other people tell you how I could possibly know.

Think about it, rather than go off on sudden tangents about being 21, pants on fire, and referring to London and then suddenly saying it has nothing to do with it.

How do I know you haven’t spoken to someone who wasn’t sober? Well I have been following the conversation, clearly unlike yourself, and in the original post you said that you didn’t know ‘exactly’ what happened. It would sometimes help if you recalled what you have said.

There are people out there investigating this and I have no doubt the Ombudsmans office will have a large part of oversight. The truth, good or bad, will come out. Amateur detective work and conjecture doesnt help anyone

London is a bit larger than here, so yes if one does fail there are one million others that can possibly capture something.

But in London did anyone know about it when these numerous camera’s failed? Or did they just sit around for four days waiting to fix themselves?

This has nothing to do with London, I was simply stating that if it were the case that this camera in Civic could be used to capture a “terrorist” than everybody would be up in arms and it would definatley capture attention.

The fact is that this camera was not working and didn’t capture this crime.
Alot of hearsey has occured I’m sure, but there has also been some odd statements from the police that don’t sit well with SOME people that have to make you wonder……

And just because we are 21 doesn’t mean that we are drunk every chance we get. Not everyone in civic at 12.15am is blind drunk and couldn’t tell if their pants were on fire!

How do YOU know that I haven’t spoken to someone that wasn’t sober?
Maybe the police have eye witnesses that were sober?
Do you know for a FACT (cos I know everyone loves that word) that they haven’t spoken to anyone that wasn’t sober at the time?

yeah….its a conspiracy. Learn a bit about what actually happened in London. Numerous security cameras on the English network failed that day, or weren’t working.

We are living in Australia in the 21st century, not the USA in the early 70s. There is no conspiracy. The cameras are simply an addition to the security program in the city. We got along just fine without them before hand.

I’d suggest that if you spoke to someone who saw the incident who was sober your opinion would be markedly different but, to be perfectly honest, anything other than an enormous conspiracy theory doesnt sit well with you. Trust me, there is no-one doing cartwheels or sharing hearty handshakes because they don’t have the footage. A lot of amateur detective work going on here based on hearsay and assumptions

I agree with you Maelinar (this is scary) that the ACT government has something to answer for when the CCTV network can just fail and there is nothing to alert anyone about it.
Or people are not maintaining the cameras to make sure they are all fully operational.

I also think with the UK bombings and Howard now addressing the terrorism threats again the first thing that should be looked at is that our security systems are up to scratch. Don’t you agree?

Wasn’t there a bomb scare in civic the other day?

Now if there was a suspect that placed a bomb in civic that could have been captured on CCTV, but due to the network being down has gotten away we would all be freaking out and asking questions about it then? Wouldn’t we?

The ACT government needs to address it.

I’m stil not fully convinced that the camera’s were not worknig anyway……….

Machines can do the work TAD.

As a ten minute job, I’d write a shell script to run off the clock looking to see if the storage directory has had any data added since the last check. Run that every ten minutes and, if there has been no addition, automatically fire emails off to the Chief of Police, the watch commander, and the contractor.

If I spent a day on it i’d also look for white noise and meaningless data.

I’m not a computer person by training or profession.

“Technology” never breaks, components break all the time but well designed (not the same thing as expensive) systems should only fail catastrophically in the event of castastrophe. And there’s no excuse for systems which die quietly.

As long as the stuff is being stored then it doesn’t matter so much if no-ones watching any given second.

But as this story rolls on it just gets weirder and weirder and isn’t painting a pretty picture.

ORL, I sympathise, but unfortunately the word of the police will be taken over somebody under the influence of alcohol each and every time, and I don’t think you’ll find too many of the witnesses at 12:15am on a Saturday would have been sober.

While circumspect, the footage from the CCTV would have proven otherwise, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s either ‘destroyed’ or ‘never existed’, but there’s been enough evidence supplied to indicate to me that I’ll never see it.

Things are looking grim in the police were wrong camp, although I’d fully support a criminal negligence by omission of responsibility charge on the ACT Government for not having the appropriate support network in place to ensure that the CCTV was operational.

Going back to earlier comments that someone should have noticed that the system was not working within a couple of days.

You seem to be under some misunderstanding that someone has the job of actually monitoring the vision coming from the cameras.

To explain: there is no office set up with monitors, chair and a person with the job of watching, panning, zooming for bad guys.

The City Police Station front office has 2 guys/girls (and sometimes an elderly police volunteer).
They:
1. Attend to the people who attend at the counter
2. Answer the phone from people reporting stuff.
3. Enter jobs for dispatch on the computer from above.
4. Write off minor jobs with no enquiries necessary from above.
5. Do their own paperwork relating to their current investigations/jobs from when they were on patrol previous shift/still active.
6. Play on the internet from their AFP computers (riotact, email, games, whatever)
7. Watch the TV (which is permanently on even if nothing worth watching is)
8. Read the Canberra Times (particularly the cop bashing stories)
9. Eat lunch, chips, drinks etc
10. Have a glance at the Civic CCTV monitors as they walk past to do 1-9.

I must be a gluten for punishment because I just had to add a little something.

“Um people, we have an area full of witnesses, do you think no camera fooatge is going to change anything”? TOOL

TOOL apparently an area full of witnesses when up against the police are NOT going to count in your opinion.
Isn’t this what you said in another argument.

“Think about it people, how could the version of events as described by ‘my fifteen minutes of fame’ Bicevskis have happened”?

“Perhaps we should have checked the sobriety level of this clown before we take their comments as gospel”.

“Would it be more believable if “joe Smith from nowhere said the cops weren’t speeding’ as opposed to ‘Superintendant lala’? Me thinks that is what people believe”.

Well Tool I believe the footage would change everything. The eye witnesses’s would be proved right. In MY opinion. Bu that is just me.

I know I would like the truth about the camera incident……actually the WHOLE incident.

I think if people have enough guts to sign up to become a police person, which I have no doubts would be a bloody hard job, they should have enough guts to come out with the truth and be responsible.

Frypan, Fire, ACT Government.

Someone’s gotta burn for this, one way or another.

There is a municipal responsibility involved and evidence of a hideous glitch in administrative and logistical support.

I support sackings in this instance.

They probably purchased the cameras at Tandy and Dick Smith then charged the government a motza to install them. They then have to wait on replacing damaged cameras until Tandy order more in.

G

Amazing

Maybe the Camera’s should be outsourced to the best eBay bidder. That way they would probably work all the time.

Is it just me or are we governed by paranoid idiots who do their best to fuck up everyones lives

Did they put in a tender?

I’m afraid it is a crap system. But you still should not jump to conclusions

TAD we’ve got an IT investment of under $1,000, when it goes down everyone is aware of it, and you might have noticed we publish a technical explanation when it comes back up.

In our $1,000 project we have had ONE four day outage in FIVE YEARS.

Now if this system is as crap as you say it is, then it should be the minister’s head and it’s a shame this too has been covered up for so long.

If technology keeps breaking it’s crap, and professionals should not work with it.

I can recommend several people in canberra who could build you a better, cheaper system over a weekend.

TAD, that is hardly fair, CCTV cameras going down are a matter of public safety, and are removing potentially vital evidence from a potential inquiry into the conduct of police.

RiotACT going down is a matter of a few people not being able to argue as easily as usual (Sorry Johnboy).
RiotACT isn’t exactly going to be filled with viatl evidence is it?

Mate, you are talking about a outsourced piece of enquipment which although costing a motza is not failsafe.

A powerspike caused the system to crash. Police did not need to equipment for a couple of days and did not notice for a couple of days.

The next time Riot Act goes down, I’ll be demanding an enquiry and your resignation.

We’re talking about a network that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and which doesn’t have redundant storage (cost under $5,000)?

You’re telling me there’s a fault which is, and I quote “Easily rectified” yet which goes unrectified for four days?

You’re telling me this system has no automated fault checking set to alert the admins (cost a few lines of shell script and an email adress)?

And then telling me there’s no need to hold anyone accountable and nothing suspicious?

If a dodgy looking punter gave the police a story like that would they believe it?

CCTV breaks down before and not related to the incident.

Do you really think someone should resign over that? Technology breaks down all the time and I’m sure all concerned are as pissed off about it as you are.

I’m sorry TAD I’m very confused, when was the fault notified to the Government?

We’ve had statements that it the are no records from 27 July to 1 August.

We had statements on monday that there were records which would be used for internal-only investigation.

As the storage system is so primitive as to fail without notification can we also assume there are no audit trails? Perhaps they’ve failed too?

Maybe it all makes sense to you insiders, but with the information that has been released to the public it gives every impression of a cover-up, complete with smear campaign against inconvenient witnesses.

And now we have evidence going missing.

Not a pretty picture at all, not one to inspire any trust in an internal investigation.

Tool it’s the questions not asked that interest me, more than recording the ones that are asked

To date no-one associated with the CCTV system has resigned.

My error.

CCTV when checked after the incident was found to have crashed 2 days prior.

It is owned by ACT Govt, Maintained by a third party and used by police (1) live monitoring when something is happening (usually a brawl) to advise police on the ground (2) checking back after the fact (hard drive recording for about 4 weeks)

Johnboy, are you aware of the full discosure laws the police have? Or perhaps now the entire judicial system is corrupt?

Hands up for the Dept of CCTV to be created.

Well TAD that doesn’t match what police media are saying, if they had already logged the maintenance call why were they even trying to extract the imagery only to re-discover the fault?

I’m certainly trust you more than they, but it boggles the mind the casual dishonesties they seem to keep passing around.

And Tool? I’m no policing expert but I do know a bit about framing investigations to lead to desired findings.

What a load of crap.

ACT Govt own and maintain the cameras. Police monitor them from City Station front office. They went down a couple of days earlier. Police reported, Govt just had not fixed them.

Johnboy,

Pick and choose witnesses hey? If only it were so simple, your vast knowledge of court proceedings astounds me, clearly here in Canberra we only introduce evidence that is prejudicial, anything to suggest otherwise is destroyed, oh and the defence cannot investigate either!

Who is responsible for the maintenance of the CCTV surveillance cameras in Civic?

Big Brother is currently experiencing technical difficulties, please continue to bemoan your loss of civil liberties and entertain various conspiracy theories whilst these matters are rectified.

as they say

“Police are especially keen to see any footage that might have been captured on mobile phones or video cameras. “

so it may be confiscated and destroyed

Yes but as it’s the same organisation picking and choosing its witnesses as is under suspicion, and the same one which had unspecified “technical issues” with the cameras that’s hardly reassuring to the public now is it Tool?

If the cameras just weren’t recording then again they should have said so, but again we’re being kept in the dark and being fed an unspecified but pungent substance.

I have a strong suspicion that the “Technical Issue” to which they refer is that very few, if any, of the CCTV cameras in civic actually record. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across this – one of my friends had an expensive pair of sunnies nicked off the counter in the police station by a druggie who was reporting in for bail conditions or something. The police said there was little they could do because there was “no evidence”.
“What about those two cameras?” queried my friend.
“Oh, they don’t record” he was told.
Bloody useful.

Um people, we have an area full of witnesses, do you think no camera fooatge is going to change anything?

Convenient.

What a coincidence.

One camera with a technical issue – vaguely credible.
Two – getting very sus.
Three – utter hogwash. Treating us like dopes.

Well they would be able to see the footage if something hadn’t hapenned to it.

That is odd, I was under the impression that the police and associated minister would be able to see the footage and nobody else would…might have been my imagination though…