Official: UK security cameras not particularly effective

In becoming the world's most-watched nation, Britain was promised a commensurate drop in crime.

But the estimated 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras in the U.K. have made barely a blip on the graph of public safety, a senior London detective in charge of the program admitted yesterday.

Calling Britain's multibillion-dollar surveillance network "an utter fiasco," Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said video footage has solved only 3 per cent of crime.

"Billions of pounds have been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court," Neville, head of the visual images unit at New Scotland Yard, told a security conference in London.

"It's been an utter fiasco... There's no fear of CCTV. Why don't people fear it? (They think) the cameras are not working."

Neville's warning came as London police launched an effort to improve video-based convictions, including a searchable citywide database intended to track and identify offenders and an initiative to put images of suspects in muggings, robberies and sexual assaults on the Internet.