By Aneeka Simonis
Residents drive plan to build their own anti-crime street CCTV…
A VIRTUAL security fence is being proposed to protect Lakeside residents from crime.
Dubbed Neighbourhood Watch for the 21st century, the plan was prompted by the 2013 death of Pakenham mum Kylie Blackwood.
“It’ll be like putting a digital fence around Lakeside,” said the plan’s instigator Giles Gibson.
Under the $5000 plan all entrances, exits, parks and roundabouts in the residential estate in Pakenham would be under 24 hour camera surveillance as part of the community-led and managed initiative being put to police.
“It will be community owned, no political push behind it, it’s our system,” said the 44-year-old.
He said the scheme would rely on residents offering up their property to host and mount the CCTV camera as well as paying the bandwidth bill for constant video streaming.
Unlike most home surveillance systems, this proposal would see the camera face away from the owners’ property and toward public spaces.
It aims to do away with council bureaucracy and red tape by avoiding the need for permits required to set up cameras on public land.
Footage would be fed live to the property owner as well as to police to discourage crime in the area and assist police with criminal investigations.
About 40 privately-hoisted cameras would be required to effectively cover each target point in the estate, and Mr Gibson said he already has about 16 households on board to volunteer in the crime-fighting initiative.
The discreet cameras would capture high-definition day and night vision of the area and feed it live to investigators, mitigating the need for doorknocking or delaying the handover of private CCTV to police.
A public meeting will be held at Lakeside Lutheran College at 7pm on Wednesday 19 October to gauge the community’s stance on the plan.
Police and Bass MP Brian Paynter are then due to hold a closed discussion at Pakenham Police Station on Thursday 20 October.
Pakenham police Senior Sergeant Graeme Stanley said the meeting will consider details including who would pay for the cameras and ongoing surveillance and how it would be monitored and stored.
“CCTV is a valuable investigative tool used in identifying offenders and deterring crime,” he said.
Mr Gibson, who works in telemetry, said he had been mulling over the CCTV idea since Mrs Blackwood’s death.
The arrest of Scott Alan Murdoch in April this year, more than two and a half years after her death, came a day after police released CCTV footage of a car in the neighbourhood at the time of her death.
Mr Murdoch was later charged with Mrs Blackwood’s murder.
Organisers will soon apply for State Government grants to cover the costs and launch a crowdfunding site after the public meeting.
In July, police in Cardinia shire, Casey and Greater Dandenong areas began a public campaign for residents to register their private CCTV surveillance system with them.
Home surveillance installations are becoming a growing trend in the region as it continues to be hit hard by a wave of aggravated burglaries.
Cardinia Crime Investigation Unit (CIU) detectives rely heavily on crime scene surveillance in criminal investigation.
Cardinia CIU Detective Sergeant Phil Jury said he’d be interested to hear more about the estate surveillance proposal.
“Anything that can assist in crime investigation is worth exploring,” he said.
