In the thick of the holiday travel rush, plenty of homes have been left empty and to some extent vulnerable to would-be thieves. To catch them, many have opted for surveillance cameras to keep track of who is coming and going.
It has also become an even more vital tool for police.
“When things are in motion, sometimes it can be tough to observe that tattoo or observe the face even – and then try to do a photo lineup. So when you have video, there’s no bias to it,” Constable Blake Schols, fromm the Edmonton Police Service (EPS), said.
“You give that to a crown prosecutor and you can clearly identify somebody on video. It’s a slam dunk more often than it isn’t.”
Schols is a tech-savvy member of the force, whose background in surveillance installation has been vital. He also spent time working the street as an EPS member.
A break and enter investigation from 2014 is among the cases Schols has been instrumental in. The suspect, who police say acted with a sexual motivation, received a seven-year sentence.
According to Schols, surveillance video serves as an “ever-watching, unbiased witness.” He adds there are “hundreds upon hundreds” of city cameras dispersed throughout Edmonton. However, the bulk of surveillance footage EPS receives comes from the public.
“The citizens of Edmonton are able to provide that video a lot quicker. Technology is improving. You go to your Best Buy or Costco these days. They offer these systems and not only are they high-quality now. they’re also at a reasonable price,” Schols said.
He credits the digital age and the immediacy of social media portals such as Facebook, with distributing images of crime more rapidly.
“We can get suspects a lot more quicker, we can identify things – where it used to take us a month or two of investigation – it could be hours now where we turn this around,” Schols said.
Rob Lansink owns Action Security Cameras. They sell and perform surveillance setups for both commercial and residential properties.
“You can capture something at a distance, so we can get a license plate at 150 feet maybe. That’s something you just couldn’t do in the past without a three, four, five-thousand dollar camera,” he said.
While police acknowledge surveillance can serve as a deterrant to criminals, it is not a fool-proof preventative measure.
“We can’t tell everybody ‘yeah, please put Fort Knox everywhere – all over Edmonton. But we certainly want to encourage if it’s something you’re considering,” Lansink said.
Edmontonians are able to report crimes online, but Constable Schols discourages people from posting their surveillance video publicly to EPS’s Twitter account or Facebook page. Instead, he recommends they contact the police service directly first, before providing their video footage.
“If it goes all over media…that person may get that heads up and that’s it. They’re going to go. They’re going to stop committing crime and we’re working backwards,” Schols said.
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