YMCA Bournemouth’s Chatterbox Project visit Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council CCTV control room
As part of the National Surveillance Camera Day 2019, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Community Safety Team invited the Chatterbox group to the CCTV control room based at Bournemouth Police Station.
The Chatterbox group spent their time learning about why the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Community Safety Team (BCP) have CCTV, how to use the cameras, mapping, producing evidence and respecting people’s privacy by masking images.
The Chatterboxes is a youth action project run by young people with disabilities aged 11 to 25 years old from Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset. Within all groups there is a focus on transitions and supporting members to build skills to help them in the future. Young members also deliver awareness workshops/ training in the community, create youth friendly literature and organise community awareness events.
Poppy who works within the project said:
Being able to visit BCP council’s CCTV unit has been a fantastic experience for the young people from The Chatterbox Project. With a range of disabilities, many of these young people feel unsafe when venturing into the town centre so having the opportunity to observe Bournemouth through the eyes of a CCTV camera and speak and ask questions to such friendly and kind camera operators has been a fantastic way to enable young people involved to gain a deeper understanding of how BCP Council’s CCTV unit operates and in turn feel safer.
BCP welcomed the Chatterboxes into their control room as part of the Surveillance Camera Day ‘doors open’ initiative so they could see, first hand, how they operate CCTV. The young people got to try out the CCTV equipment.
Tony Gleason, CCTV Manager at BCP, said:
We really enjoyed the visit. We discussed why we have CCTV, how it makes people feel safer and how it helps the police. They learnt how to use the cameras, identified digital masking of private properties and the areas where we have CCTV cameras. Some of them had excellent computer skills and a good eye for detail.
Surveillance Camera Day is a national event to encourage a conversation about the use of surveillance cameras in modern society. The day is one of the deliverables of the civil engagement strand of the National Surveillance Camera Strategy and is a world first. It raises awareness about surveillance cameras and generates a debate about how they are used in society.
