Johannesburg’s growing CCTV network will be a welcome addition to its crime-fighting capabilities, says Sarah Wissler, chairperson of the city’s public safety committee.
The Sunday Times joined Wissler on a tour of the integrated intelligence operations centre (IIOC) at Johannesburg metro police department (JMPD) headquarters, from where the camera network is operated and managed.
“The city is planning to expand their existing network of CCTV cameras from more than 800 units — 223 belonging to the city and 611 to Vumatel — to more than 6,000,” Wissler said.
“Together with Vumatel’s Vumacams, our network of cameras are already doing a lot of great work in law enforcement. We are detecting — in real time — anything from vandalism and car theft to violent crimes.
“From here in the integrated intelligence operations centre, our tactical response teams, or whoever is required for a particular situation, are activated.”
The network has licence plate recognition (LPR) capabilities — and the JMPD operators use it to great effect.
“In January, 53 vehicles were impounded because of LPR, and 38 arrests were made. In February, 34 vehicles were impounded and 12 arrests made,” Wissler told the Sunday Times.
“We now also have 611 Vumacams live, which is great. But once we are done with the upgrades to the IIOC we will have 6,000 Vumacams live across the City of Joburg ... Can you imagine what that means for law enforcement?”
She doesn’t yet know when the expansion will be done.
“With the Vumacam network we encompass 500 suburbs — that’s roughly 520km².”
The camera network is a counterpunch to a wide-ranging group of challenges, “not just normal street crime, but also other challenges such as infrastructure damage, people vandalising our traffic lights and the theft of copper cables”.
She believes public interest trumps objections by residents to a new bylaw that requires them to register their CCTV cameras. The bylaw also forbids any CCTV footage of a public place being shared with anyone other than the police.
“Security companies have been putting cameras up for ages all over the city. But there was no bylaw to say what people could or couldn’t do. This is a big leap towards fixing that.
“Our teams will go out and check the cameras. If you live next to a public park, you obviously can’t have a camera pointing directly into the park.”
JMPD inspector Sibongile Khoele is in charge of the IIOC.
“The inner city is a focus point. Our cameras are evenly spread across the CBD. We pick up anything from counterfeit goods to attempted rapes and violent crime. From here we can activate our tactical units.
“The average response time to such a call is seven minutes, but [often] three minutes, depending on where the officers are when they receive the call,” Khoele said on Thursday.
“The Vumacams have tech behind them. The moment they pick something up, the system is activated. Our other cameras are more low-tech — they do not activate anything themselves, but we can access them,” Khoele said.
The IIOC is buzzing.
“In total we have 93 staff members divided into four [alternating] shifts of 12 hours each. Six to six, but every team comes 15 minutes early so they are here at 5:45. We run 24/7.”
One wall, by the entrance, is covered with big screens showing the views of different Joburg security cameras. Facing the wall is a room divided into work stations, each with crew manipulating cameras and communicating with their team leaders.
On the left of the room is the Vumacam station.
“Their operator communicates via a WhatsApp group with our tactical response teams. He can guide them to where the suspect is,” Khoele said.
As the Sunday Times watches, an incident unfolds.
“The Vumacam was activated by a truck alarm. The truck was stolen in the south of Johannesburg.”
The Vumacam operator’s fingers dance across the keyboard as he accesses various cameras and switches effortlessly between views of different parts of Johannesburg. With every change of direction made by the truck, he notifies the tactical response team on the WhatsApp group, until they finally have the truck in their sights.
“We picked this one up after the alarm, but if it was reported stolen earlier and then drove past one of the Vumacams, the LPR would have picked it up. This has changed law enforcement for the better.”
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