Glasgow Community and Safety Services (GCSS), an organisation set up by Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Police, was keen to provide the city's three million visitors and locals alike with a safe environment to socialise. So it created the Night Zone, a partnership initiative that is designed to help residents and visitors get home quickly and safely from a night out in the city.
With an average of 100,000 people coming into the city centre on a Friday and Saturday evening, GCSS worked together with its partners to enhance street lighting, increase CCTV coverage, provide a help point network and introduce transport marshals to answer questions from the public on how best to get home.
Brian Maguire, Managing Director at Racam, installers of the CCTV system explained: "When we were approached by GCSS for this project, we had in mind that we would use MIC Series cameras. Glasgow City Council installed some 20 MIC cameras in the parks about five years ago and it was impressed with the camera's robustness, design and image quality.
Part of the appeal was the MIC camera's compact, attractive design which allows for discreet integration into urban environments, but the ability to react to situations as they arise was also key, which is why the MIC Series 400 PA version, with twin public address speakers, was specified. MIC Series cameras have also been fitted to 19 of GCSS' vehicles to provide mobile surveillance and were part of a solution trialled during the Scottish Cup Final last year, as Walter Kean, Head of Facilities at GCSS commented: "In the first year the cameras were installed, we conducted a survey and discovered that there had been a 20% reduction in offences, particularly around taxi ranks," he said. "During the cup final we were able to deploy the vehicles to the coach drop off points, to monitor the fans' behaviour - that kind of versatility is invaluable to help drive the reaction from the police or council."
All Bosch's MIC Series 400 pan-tilt-zoom cameras are rated to any industry-leading IP68 for uncompromising performance in the most extreme surveillance environments and can be mounted upright, inverted or canted for total installation flexibility.
Walter Kean concluded: "Such is the success of the Night Zone scheme that 700 hundred crimes have been prevented, amounting to a saving of at least £500,000 a year. A number of other councils across the country have visited to see the set up for themselves and are now using it as a template for their own CCTV solutions."
