Is CCTV for Decoration?

The two Koreans in China, who were related to the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) cash card forgery and cash withdrawing crime, tuned themselves in to the police after their faces, which were pictured by the CCTV at the cash machine, were reported on media. The CCTV of the financial institution for incidents like this did its work.

However, this was very unusual. If we look into it closely, CCTV`s being operated in financial institutions, private companies, and apartment complexes are so shabby that they need to be completely fixed in order for us to expect real crime prevention effect.

▽Actual situation=The Police, in relation to this crime, read the CCTV pictures from the cash machine and figured out that the ‘illegal withdrawers’ were four. However, out of 25 CCTV pictures that the Police got, only 4 were readable. Therefore, only 16% of CCTV`s worked.

The head of the criminal division of the Gwangmyeong Police Station in Gyeonggi, Woo Jong-su said, “The quality of the CCTV pictures was so poor. There were very few CCTV cameras angled to take facial pictures.”

The falling incident of a college student Mr. Sim (28) happened in the platform of the Sindorim Station in Guro-Gu, Seoul at around 6 in the morning of the 19th was an example to show the blind point of CCTV.

The Police presumed that he fell down to the tracks and hit by a train because he was drunk and lost his balance, but his family is repelling, “There must be another reason.”

The CCTV at the platform, which could be a definite evident, did not record the situation. The station official said, “The CCTV at the platform is for monitoring, so it did not record it.” His family is anxious saying, “If it was recorded, we could verify the cause of the death.”

▽Problem = Most CCTV`s in financial institutions are analog types. However, the quality of picture is getting bad because they used the tape over and over again to save the tape expense. Experts are saying, “If the 2-hour long tape has been used 18 times, the quality is dropped, and it needs to be exchanged.” However, most of the financial institutions are using it for around 168 hours (84 times), and some uses up to 480 times.

And in some cases, the angle of CCTV`s are not fixed properly and creating counter light, so the face is not recognized at all. A CCTV installer said, “We can say that the CCTV`s installed in financial institutions and public office in 3, 4 years are not recording properly.”

▽Countermeasure = Security experts advise, “Financial institutions must take care of their CCTV`s.” And they pointed out that CCTV`s should be changed into DVR style that can record tens of different locations simultaneously.

The Police Headquarters decided to change the analog style CCTV`s in 3,209 police stations in the country to digital types since the CCTV of the police station in Cheonju, Cheonbuk didn’t work during the police officer killing incident in last September.

The Chair of the Korea Private Security Association, Lee Yun-keun (Professor, Police Administration Department, Dongguk University) said, “Korean financial institutions tend to think that the insurance companies will compensate for burglary whenever it happens, so they do not care about changing the tapes of CCTV and managing the equipment,” and “they need to have an attitude to think about the safety of customers and people first.”

Dong-Yong Min mindy@donga.com