Camden Robocop FAQ

Over the last couple of days we’ve had a wide range of responses to the video of the new Walker House CCTV camera that barks orders at you in an American accent. Many have been aghast and I’ve read the words “dystopian” and “1984” more times over the weekend than in the whole of 2011 put together.

As with any controversial issue there have also been others who have raised objections to the video. These have come in via twitter, comments here, YouTube comments, reddit and others. As the same points are being raised a number of times in different places I thought it would be useful to create an FAQ (which I may update as and when) rather than answer them individually.

 

Q: I live somewhere other than Walker House/Camden and we have crime here that should be stopped.

I’m really sorry to hear that. It’s terrible to live in a place where there are gangs, crime problems or anti-social behaviour. I guess that’s why I’m lucky to live in Walker House where we don’t have these problems. Perhaps the £25,000 the council spent putting this up monitoring our communal garden could have been better spent sorting out the problems you have.

 

Q: Walker House has a crime problem that should be stopped

The Metropolitan Police website has a useful feature where you can look up where crime and anti-social behaviour is occurring. It shows that over the entirety of 2011 there was not one arrest or call out over anti-social behaviour or any other crime in Walker House. Not one for an entire year.

One of our local councillors, Roger Robinson, who is a hard working councillor that we all respect, is quoted in The Independent saying that the council are “entitled to do something” because of “drug dealing and harassment” and that “People have been known to smash cars and steal motorbikes. ”

The evidence simply is not there to suggest there is a crime wave that needs extreme measures to halt it. In fact the evidence is not there that there is any crime problem at all. Roger is letting us down in two ways here.

Firstly he is trying to justify a camera pointing into our communal garden in order to stop vandalism of vehicles in the parking area, which the camera doesn’t even point at, so this does not make sense. Secondly he is trashing the reputation of Walker House in order to retrospectively justify a clearly over the top decision that the council should simply retreat from with good grace.

Is Walker House a utopia of good neighbours and virtue? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. The kids are very loud when they run round, as they do every day. During the day people who don’t live here come and sit in our nice garden, and sometimes people find that intimidating if it’s a big group of lads. It being Camden there probably *is* some crime that is going unreported.

But people online are saying the House is a haven for drug dealing and sex workers. This is simply a fantasy and I’d appreciate it if people did not treat our community as if we’re a bunch of socially dysfunctional monsters. We’re really nice!

 

Q: You don’t own the garden

No, I don’t. There have been some frankly weird comments saying that I think the garden is my personal property and I should be the one who decides everything that goes on there. No I don’t think that and it’s weird that you think I do.

In the English language “my” can mean direct ownership (my coat, my life, my job) but it can also be broader than that. When people say my home town or my street they don’t mean they own the town or they own their street. This is common usage of the language and attempting to pretend otherwise is willful misinterpretation.

My community (no, I don’t own the community either) should have a real say over decisions like this. It is our communal garden after all and we understand its problems better than the council or the police. We live here after all.

 

Q: The residents want it

No. They don’t. We’ve not completed going to every door in Walker House yet but the vast majority of residents we’ve spoken to so far do not want it. And they’ve signed the petition against it so we’re confident that the majority are opposed and that we can prove it.

There are a couple of very loud residents who think it’s brilliant and the council appears to be listening to them rather than the rest of us who’d rather our garden was not polluted with an authoritarian robot telling us we’re in a restricted area.

 

Q: the council has the right to do whatever it wants

We have no idea whether the council has the legal right to do this. However, we do have the right as citizens in a democracy to tell the council what we think of their decision. If you don’t think we should have that right… tough.

 

Q: You shouldn’t be out at night time

What? Really? We have yet to discover whether Camden Council is seeking a curfew order to enforce a borough wide bedtime, but we think it’s unlikely.

The camera is light sensitive so it is activated when it gets dark. At the moment this means that people going to work at 7am have been ordered out of the area as have people in the garden at ten to six pm. Hardly unsocial hours, but that’s irrelevant.

This is not a restricted area night or day. We do not have a problem with gangs hanging round into the night and 99.9% of the time this camera goes off it is telling a resident they are not welcome in their own community. That’s wrong.

 

Q: there are more important things to worry about, like Syria.

It’s terrible what’s happening in Syria. The opposition are so courageous to put their lives on the line to overthrow their murderous regime. We can only hope the situation there is resolved quickly with as little bloodshed as possible, although I feel pessimistic about this.

However, unless we think the only problem we should be concerned about is the worst global problem then the people who live in Walker House are still entitled to an opinion on what is happening here, and they are entitled to express this publicly.

I should point out to the people making this criticism though that there are loads of examples of internet people complaining about far more trivial things than this online and until you’ve sorted those out first you shouldn’t come and wag your finger at us.

 

Q: It’s not aimed at residents

Actually it is. Literally.

 

Q: you should just put up with it

No. We’ve higher aspirations for our communities than simply putting up with things that don’t kill us. We want Walker House, Somerstown and the whole of Camden to be brilliant. This camera is a step away from the kind of community we want where we have real ownership over where we live, collectively, as a community. We don’t want to be part of the council’s restricted area.

 

Q: You must have asked for it

No. As stated above there are a couple of residents who’ve been boasting about how influential they are with the council and they want to see as much policing, cameras, and law enforcement as they can get. This does not represent even a significant minority view let alone the majority view.

We were informed two weeks before that CCTV was going to be put up. In a low crime block that seems like a waste of money, but this goes way beyond CCTV and we weren’t even informed this was going to happen let alone consulted.

 

Q: if it solves one crime it will be worth it

This camera will not solve any anti-social behaviour, it is anti-social behaviour.

If there was a non-resident standing in the garden at night time telling everyone who came by to move on, we’d give them short shift. This camera is that guy, put there by people who do not live here but are too lazy to actually stand there and do it for themselves – so they get a robot to do it for them.

This camera will not stop vehicle crime because a) it isn’t happening and b) it’s pointed at the garden.

This camera wont stop kids playing football and running about – and a good thing too.

This camera will not prevent a mugging, drug dealing or prostitution – although if you see a serious crime taking place in Walker House call the police and you can create the first crime stat here for more than a year.

 

Our communities are safer when we are all looking out for each other – not when we’re being told to stay indoors. The safest public areas are the ones that are used, creating a restricted area makes the garden less safe for us all. It is a well established fact that the most effective crime deterrent is the eyes of other people.

Camden Council, please take robocop down. Thank you.