Police response times and investigations in the Armadale CBD were set to improve with Armadale police now having direct access to 53 of the City of Armadale’s CCTV cameras.
The city and Armadale police signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year, which granted police access to the cameras with a new computer system installed at the station.
They provide coverage of the CBD including Jull Street, Minnawarra and Memorial park, Fourth Road, Orchard and Commerce avenues and Whitehead Street.
Police also have access to the Armadale central shopping centre CCTV system.
Armadale local policing team acting sergeant Chris Ross said being able to instantly see what was happening in the CBD had helped dramatically.
“We’re able to investigate and locate and resolve crime issues a lot easier with this vision,” he said.
“We can hear jobs come in on the radio and if we hear there’s a disturbance in the Jull Street mall or Minnawarra park we can go straight to the cameras and have a look.
“By then it might have dispersed or if we can see it’s quite serious we can get more troops down there.
“It gives us eyes on the street from the comfort of the station.”
Sgt Ross said it also helped police investigations into incidents where previously they would have had to rely on witness statements.
“We had one the other day where a male was assaulted on Fourth Road, a guy just had a bit of an issue and assaulted a senior citizen right in the middle of the road,” he said.
“We had that on about three different cameras completely showing the incident.”
Sgt Ross said gone were the days of police asking for information on suspects identified by blurry CCTV images.
“This is all high res digital, so it’s very good vision,” he said.
“Some cameras actually pan back and if they sense movement they’ll actually zoom in on that movement.”
Armadale chief executive Ray Tame said in recent years the city had worked on creating a network of CCTV infrastructure that covered the city centre.
“The city and police will now share footage and access to live streaming which gives better oversight of the area as well as enabling a quicker response to any potential issues in the area,” he said.
The city recently installed another $170,000 worth of CCTV infrastructure across the CBD, which brought the total cost of the system to $1 million.
A further $90,000 was included in this year’s budget for maintenance and operational purposes.
