Obviously, CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) can offer a means of combating anti-social behaviour but it is akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. CCTV is both clumsy and expensive. By complete contrast, however, Community Monitored TV is both relatively inexpensive and easy to use. If you can handle Facebook then you can readily understand how CMTV works. Better still, Community Monitored TV is simple to deploy because all the required elements will be in place. All you need is an Internet link – fixed broadband, for example – and a screen. CMTV is so flexible that you could even use a smartphone to view captured video footage.

The key benefit with CMTV, however, is that it is intelligent. The system uses inexpensive motion detecting web cameras so they only record suspicious activity which saves the hours of trawling through video footage captured by traditional CCTV systems. Better still, alerts can be sent out via email or text (SMS) messages when unexpected activity is detected.

“The benefits of this kind of technology for Housing Associations across the UK and the wider community are endless,” said Community Safety Co-ordinator, Kerry Foster, who has been leading a CMTV project in conjunction with Surrey Police. “Instead of spending hundreds of pounds a month on surveillance contractors who collect and download footage, I can monitor events in real time as they occur and put the savings to use elsewhere”.

She continued “Results have been impressive so far, we have had an 85 per cent drop in complaint calls from residents since Jabbakam was installed and footage has already being used for evidence to convict offenders in police investigations.”

The Police seem to concur with this opinion.  “The benefits of this kind of technology for the Police and the wider community are endless,” explained Surrey Heath Crime Reduction Advisor, John Eldridge. “Instead of taking hours to download footage and monitor it, which was expensive and time consuming, we can simply log onto the website and gain instant access to the footage and evidence we need.”

Both Kerry Foster and John Eldridge have been working with CMTV systems provided by UK based Jabbakam. The system is the brainchild of James Wickes, who founded the service back in 2010 after interrupting four men attempting to break into his house. James Wickes said, “As technology becomes a core part of human life, trying to solve complex crime with stone-­age tools doesn’t work. Jabbakam has been deliberately designed with ease of use in mind and the platform is based around the latest mobile and social media tools that we are using in our daily lives. The flexibility of the solution is key to its success and widespread adoption.”

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. In the borough of Surrey Heath, one housing association, Accent Peerless Ltd, has pioneered a CMTV surveillance system in a trouble spot in a suburb of Camberley. Previously, the housing association had utilised a traditional CCTV system which proved both bulky and expensive.  Worse still, the out-dated CCTV cameras stored footage took hours to download and monitor, wasting valuable time and money. Community Monitored TV works so well because it combines technologies which we are all so familiar with. The cameras are intelligent versions of web-cams; viewing captured video footage is like going onto YouTube; and there’s even an app if you want to be able to monitor the situation from anywhere at any time. Essentially, it’s the ultimate in flexible monitoring systems.

Good news for Jabbakam enthusiasts. A leading Jordanian provider of business solutions,  United Business Applications (UBA), has recently acquired a major (20 per cent) stake in Jabbakam Limited. This will help to fuel further development of the Jabbakam platform. Specifically it will help to create a new, mobile-friendly version of the Jabbakam client software. Currently, Jabbakam customers can employ their smartphones to view video footage and control remote camera. However, UBA will help Jabbakam develop its existing platform to enable its users to have complete control of their online accounts from their smartphones. This move reflects the growing recognition of the importance of the mobile market. It is widely believed that the mobile web will overtake desktop internet by 2015.

Already, users can set up Jabbakam to alert them – via text message/SMS or email on their smartphones – when the cameras connected to the service detect any unexpected activity.

“Jabbakam sees the mobile device as being the primary client interface for its service and UBA’s technical expertise will enable Jabbakam to develop into the world leader in mobile security,” commented James Wickes, founder of Jabbakam.

UBA is a strong technology player in the Middle East, renowned for its mobile social media applications geared to Arab consumers. Bucking the trend of competitor technology companies in Jordan, the strategic investment in Jabbakam is the first step in UBA’s plan to expand its business globally. It will help the company to cement its position within the emerging Middle East market.

According to IMS Research http://www.imsresearch.com, the network video surveillance market within the Middle East is set to grow at a CAGR of over 20 per cent to 2016. A recent report from ReportLinker – ‘Global CCTV Market Forecast to 2014′ http://www.reportlinker.com/p0795424/Global-CCTV-Market-Forecast-to.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Security_Systems says that the surveillance market is growing rapidly in the Middle East region with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar being the three major markets where video surveillance equipment is actively deployed.

According to Hazem Bawab, CEO of UBA, ”This partnership [with Jabbakam] brings together our complementary skillsets: – UBA’s long-term know-how of the enterprise market, mobile solutions and established presence in the Middle East and Africa, along with the patented cloud-based surveillance technology provided by Jabbakam.

Bawab added, “Together we will introduce first of a kind integrated security solutions to the region. Our development teams will work to expand the capabilities of this product for not just our customer base, but people all over the world.”

So watch this space for more announcements of Jabbakam’s move into the mobile device space.

For example, an opticians in Ongar was broken into recently – the alarm was triggered and the thieves escaped with nothing, however, there wasn’t sufficient CCTV coverage of the shop to capture the raiders. “The recent spate of break-ins in Ongar does concern me,” said Mr Boatmans, the proprietor of the Opticians. “I’m not sure if it’s because they have shut the police station and the CCTV isn’t any good. Ongar is a target. We absolutely need another camera in the High Street.”

Going forward, police, shopkeepers and councils could really benefit by working closely together and installing cost-effective IP camera networks like Jabbakam. A fraction of the cost of traditional CCTV and able to alert the customer instantly when movement is detected, each shop could have their own cameras rather than rely on those in the High Street and the shopkeepers and police could work in unison when it came to managing their network of cameras.

The results of successful partnerships between the police, councils and residents can be seen in the village of Pilsley, Derbyshire where 6 months ago there were persistent reports of drunken and nuisance behavior. However, since the partnership was set up and new CCTV installed related calls to the police have dropped from 20 a week to zero.

Metal theft was the most common crime, and churches the most at threat.

English Heritage Chief Executive Simon Thurley said irreparable damage meant “centuries of history will be lost forever. Whilst heritage is not necessarily being targeted over other places, save perhaps for their valuable materials and artefacts, they are suffering a substantial rate of attrition from crime nonetheless,” he said. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/news/new-study-heritage-crime/

“Their particular vulnerability warrants every effort to ensure they are still around for future generations to enjoy just as much as we enjoy them now.”

The survey was carried out by Newcastle University, Loughborough University and the Council for British Archaeology. It looked at listed buildings, unlisted buildings in conservation areas, scheduled monuments, and historic parks and gardens and based its figures on the sample size.

Janet Gough, director of the Church of England’s cathedrals and church buildings division told the BBC, “Churches are fighting back against crime with increased security measures and vigilance but are not able to bear the threat and cost of crime indefinitely.” However, this is where cost effective solutions such as Jabbakam come into their own. Relatively cheap for the churches to purchase and use they could also recruit volunteers to be monitors of the system who could then report crimes instantly to the police. As the system can alert users as soon as movement is detected it won’t be too much of a burden on their time.

In the UK, the Coalition Government has cut funding for police forces by 20 percent. The consequences could be dire for many areas as the cuts force the police to shut many police stations. In Surrey, Epsom, Cranleigh and Walton are amongst a dozen stations earmarked for closure. As Jill Grieve, a spokeswoman for the Countryside Alliance, told the Sunday Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9150425/End-of-bobby-on-the-beat-as-third-of-police-stations-close.html

These forthcoming closures have sounded the “death knell for the bobby on the beat”. What it will mean is that for many communities – especially those living in rural areas, many won’t be able to go to a police station to report a crime unless they are prepared to travel considerable distance. It seems that both the public and the Police forces will have to turn to technology to fill this gap.

The Sunday Telegraph recently carried out a survey of 43 police forces in England and Wales. The newspaper discovered that out of 1,300 police stations, at least 361 have closed or are due to be shut to the general public over the last two years. About 66 per cent of those are in small towns and villages.

For example, in Hampshire victims of crime are being asked to report offences by email since 18 of the county’s 47 police stations are being sold off or closed.

Police forces themselves are claiming that the public is actually welcoming a move towards utilising technology rather than having to rely on the old fashioned practice of making a trip down to the local station.

One solution is, of course, to install a web based surveillance system like the one offered by Jabbakam. When an incident occurs – such as a burglary, it will provide the house owner will all the evidence that he or she needs. In effect, the video footage can be forwarded to the closest police station and officers can respond as necessary. Especially if the system has caught either a vehicle registration number or a good image of the perpetrator’s face.

Not only are the UK’s metal thieves heartless, they are now apparently fearless as well. Or possibly just plain stupid because two thieves have just stolen training weights belonging to a former England’s Strongest Man – Wayne Russell. Actually, Wayne, from Tipton was last crowned England’s Strongest Man back in 2007 but he had a good chance of winning the World’s Strongest Man this coming September until thieves took 4,300lbs of equipment worth around £2,000. Wayne remarked, “Perhaps they should have a new competition in the World’s Strongest Man to see how far we can throw metal thieves.” Nice idea.He added, “I’m angry with these people – and they wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Perhaps if they’d known who they were taking them from they’d have thought twice.”

Here’s a clue as to the sort of person they’ve upset. He weighs 22 stone and has 23 inch biceps plus size 16 feet. He also possesses a 10-inch-wide hand span.

Wayne continued, “Thieves don’t care do they? They target churches and even war memorials. I think the people who buy from these crooks are just as much to blame as the people who take them, there must be somewhere they can sell them for them to be stealing in the first place.”

The stolen weights were specially made and all that he is left with are standard 20 Kg ones and he can’t fit enough of those on the bar to be heavy enough. Those 20 Kg weights were left because they are stone.

Detective Chief Inspector Angie Whitaker, from the Force Criminal Investigation Department with the West Midlands Police told the Daily Mail, “Operation Steel is our force-wide operation which tackles metal thefts. Police in Dudley are working hard to combat metal thieves and have adopted several strategies.”

She continued, “Partner agencies are now an integral part of this operation and are working with us regularly to prevent and detect crime involving metal. We recognise the significant harm that those responsible for the thefts cause to our communities.”

To steal the weights, the villains smashed two doors and a locked metal container to take them from the Dell Stadium in Dudley in the West Midlands.

The weights (each weighing 10 stone) are so heavy that the police believe that the thieves would have needed to make several trips to remove them.

What a shame, then, that there seems to have been no video surveillance system installed. With that number of trips, a web-based video surveillance system like Jabbakam could have helped police catch the crooks. The cameras would almost certainly have recorded the criminals’ faces and maybe have even captured the vehicle registration number of the getaway van.

We’d hate to think what might happen if Wayne bumped into the culprits.

Thieves in Britain obviously have no scruples. It’s been widely reported that memorial plaques have been stolen from graveyards. Now mementos with very high sentimental value have been taken from a churchyard in Tiptree, Essex. Thieves took two cherub statues and an angel figure from graves. The loss of such items from St Luke’s Church, in Tiptree – which has also been hit by vandalism, has spurred the local vicar – the Rev Anne-Marie Renshaw, into action. She has announced plans for CCTV cameras to be installed in the churchyard.
The Rev Anne-Marie Renshaw told the Essex County Standard here http://www.essexcountystandard.co.uk/news, “We’ve had some problems with a bit of vandalism in the churchyard and with people removing items on graves, which is obviously very distressing for the families affected.
She continued, “Nobody was ever caught, but we’re hoping to improve the security in the churchyard by installing some CCTV cameras that would cover most of it.
“It will set people’s minds at rest and give the reassurance we won’t have a repeat of these distressing incidents. It will act as a deterrent and if anything happened in the future, we would have something for the police to use. We’re going to need members of the community to help fund that. The church has not got the money for pay for it.”
In order to install the cameras the vicar had to apply for a certificate of approval from the Church of England’s Diocesan Advisory Committee. If nobody raises objections then the certificate will be issued.
In order to fund the installation, it has been estimated that St Luke’s church will have to raise around £2,000. To support the appeal, potential donors might wish to ring the Rev Renshaw on 01621 815260.

Without any detailed knowledge of the intended installation, that figure might have been reduced if the church had decided to install a community monitored TV system instead. There would have been an additional benefit with a system such as Jabbakam which would have meant that all concerned parishioners could have viewed the cameras.

It’s easy to assume that – of all things, our schools would be pretty safe places. Sadly, that’s not proving the case in Surrey. It seems that criminals are not content with desecrating our war memorials, thieves are now targeting schools. And their favourite item to steal is the mobile phone. There are plenty of reasons for this. Firstly, a mobile handset is light and easy to conceal. With the introduction of smartphones, these mobile handset have become high value items costing hundreds of pounds to purchase outright. Which makes mobile phones highly attractive to thieves who aren’t just trying to sell them in pubs or clubs but in some cases are stealing to order and sending the phones abroad to countries where the mobile operators can’t detect that a handset appearing on their networks.

Recently, Emma Griffiths – a police inspector working in Tamworth, Surrey, publicly urged people to keep their mobile phones safe, after a spate of thefts. Significantly, Inspector Griffiths specially singled out schools as a place where mobile phones could go missing. She told Thisis Tamworth

http://www.thisistamworth.co.uk/Phones-stolen-pubs-clubs/story-15121425-detail/story.html

“Schoolchildren should be aware of not leaving their mobile phones around in PE bags at school – they are really something that needs taking care of,” Griffiths warned. She also urged people not to be careless and leave their handsets in pockets of unattended coats or bags.
A teacher at Barrow Hedges Primary School, Carshalton, Surrey wasn’t so lucky. She had left her classroom to make a cup of tea and in doing so had left her iPhone 4 on a desk. When she returned moments later she found that her phone had gone. In this case a man, Mark Ross, of Wallington, Surrey was apprehended for the crime – according to a report in the Surrey Comet http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/sutton/9532123.Man_jailed_for_stealing_phone_from_school/

The crook was caught because the school had actually installed a surveillance system. The school’s CCTV was checked by officers from the Carshalton Central and Carshalton South and Clockhouse safer neighbourhoods teams and Mr Ross was identified entering the classroom.
The CCTV showed him leaving the classroom with what appeared to be a phone in his hand. Although Ross was arrested at his home later the same day, unfortunately for the teacher, her mobile phone was never recovered.

This incident proves the value of installing some form of video surveillance in the places where children might leave their mobile phones. These days even young children possess mobile phones and we know of at least one ten year old who managed to lose her BlackBerry smartphone – worth around £150. With tight budgets, schools might inaccurately assume that installing a system is expensive. That’s not the case with web-based surveillance systems such as those sold by Jabbakam. Cameras themselves cost as little as £50 and the other requirement – a broadband Internet connexion, is something which a school would already possess. Posting signs to say that the cloakrooms are covered by cameras should at least deter all but the most determined thief.

Here at Jabbakam Towers we’re in the business of practicing what we preach. And, having recently warned our readers of the dangers of rural theft, our governor decided it would be a jolly good idea if he followed his company’s own advice. Hence, he installed a Jabbakam camera in his own barn. One amusing side-effect of this installation is that he has now turned him into something of an amateur naturalist. David Attenborough eat you heart out – the video below was filmed at a fraction of the cost of a Life on Earth TV episode.As you can see from the footage, the real purpose of installing the Jabbakam was to monitor the tractor in the barn. If somebody attempts to steal it – or indeed tries to siphon off the diesel (it happens), then our glorious leader would have them banged to rights on video. He could then swiftly hand the evidence over to the local constabulary.

As we have mentioned on many occasions, a Jabbakam is an extremely efficient surveillance device because it only records when it detects motion. It detected motion all right but not the movements of rural thieves. Instead it captured a sly old fox boldly walking into the barn. Here in the South of England, the weather recently took a turn for the worse and on the night in question it was below freezing. So our furry friend spotted an opportunity and decided to make itself nice and comfy on a bale of straw.

Of course, if our chief was a man who kept chickens, he would have had to do something about evicting this unwanted guest. But he doesn’t,  so he is perfectly content to watch the fox’s antics.

Consequently, completely by mistake, we have discovered a novel use for web-based surveillance. It is an extremely low cost way of creating your own wild life movies. This revelation might prove particularly interesting to amateur bird watchers. It should be quite feasible to set up a camera to watch a known nest. As we stated above, the camera is only triggered to capture video when there is movement. Thus it would only be triggered to record when a mother flew back to the nest to feed her young ones, for example.

It just goes to show that installing a web-based surveillance system can have totally unexpected results. And not just the discovery that your neighbour has been stealing the apples from your orchard. Now we’ll have to add ‘wild life protection’ to the list of benefits to be derived from installing a Jabbakam system.

Those who think that the countryside is far less prone to crime than inner city areas have obviously never lived in a rural community.  There are, however, some crimes which are almost unique to non-urban areas and one of these is horse theft. Just as metal theft is increasing, so is the theft of items associated with the keeping of horses. Take this example which appeared on the New Forest Equine Directory’s Horsewatch news pages here http://www.nfed.co.uk/horsewatch.htm. “[Twice] thefts from a field in Leigh Lane occurred. The offenders stole various items including a distinctive Pirelli lunge line, lead ropes, girths, head collars and an electric fence battery. These were taken from an insecure trailer.”

So it isn’t just horseboxes and buggies which thieves are targeting. It is all types of horse associated equipment, although any machinery with a diesel engine is particularly prone to theft.

There are all kinds of (mainly voluntary) organisations spread across the UK which aim to bring together the horse community and local police forces. The best way to find your local body is to visit the national Horsewatch Alliance web site which has a map here ww.ukhorsewatch.org.uk/Map.html . There are also links to Horsewatch information pages on some of the local police force web sites. A good example of this is provided by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary which has pages outlining horse related crimes here

http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/community_safety/horsewatch/index.aspx

Already there is a nationwide scheme in place known as CESAR (the Construction & Agricultural Equipment Security and Registration Scheme). This is promoted by the Construction Equipment Association (CEA). Effectively, the scheme recognises the benefits of Datatag’s  http://www.datatag.co.uk/ ID technology and there are various types of tag which can be applied to horse related machinery such as self-adhesive, glass and datadots. When recovered, this will enable equipment to be returned to its rightful owners.

But it’s a bit like – and we’ve been dying to say this – closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Wouldn’t it be better to put a deterrent in place? This is where web based surveillance systems – such as Jabbakam – can play a part. It should be quite feasible to put cameras in place that at least watch the stable yard – perhaps even the fields in which the horses are grazing. Then the owners could display a sign such as ‘Horse thieves – smile you are on camera’. Even if this doesn’t dissuade thieves, there’s a good chance that a vehicle registration number or an image of the thief’s face caught on camera can be passed to the police authorities. All it would take is a for a criminal to be caught in this manner and the word would spread like wildfire.