The brown-shirted man walking away from Scotiabank on Wickhams Cay I 
Tuesday appeared to be going about his business as usual. The midday footage, generated from a closed-circuit television camera mounted nearby, appeared monotonous when seen on a screen at the command and control room at the Road Town Police Station. But if an officer had seen the man acting suspiciously — say, carrying a gun while running away from the bank — the officer could use the camera to pan around 360 degrees, tilt and zoom in, recording the scene as nearby units were deployed to make an arrest.
“From a proactive approach, when we get an incident we can tell who is closest to the incident and who can respond,” said Claude Rymer, a Royal Virgin Islands Police Force sergeant who helped develop the control room.
The chair for the officer monitoring the CCTV screens was empty Tuesday and the cameras aren’t yet recording. But the system will likely come online soon if the House of Assembly passes the Authorisation of Surveillance Devices Act, 2013, a bill that received its first reading last month.
Proponents of the CCTV system, which could expand to 30 cameras in the near future, hail it as a major tool in detecting and deterring crime, although critics raise concerns about potential breaches of privacy.
AUDIO: Hear officials discuss the CCTV cameras. Governor Boyd McCleary and Charles Farrier, a campaigner with the United Kingdom-based group No-CCTV, talk about their views on video surveillance.
See the March 7, 2013 edition for full coverage.
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