Gateway 100810.pmd - Rotary Club Of Bombay

on Mumbai roads? The solutions arethere, but we need mechanisms toimplement them... Perhaps numberplates ANPR can be the answer.”Finally, he turned to the two actsof horrendous terrorism that rockedLondon in the July of 2005 and therole of CCTV first in unravelling theMetro bombings of July 7 and thenin preventing their repetition on July21.When London was hit by four suicidebombers on July 7 that killed 52innocent people, CCTV proved tobe of immense help. Having notedthe spots where the bombs had goneoff, the police worked on the presumptionthat the four suicide bomberswould have been together at somestage before they split up.It was sheer good luck that the firstpresumption turned out to be right.The police guessed that the bomberscould have met at King’s Cross. On amap an area with a radius of two km.around King’s Cross was drawn andtreated as the first priority. A sufficientnumber of people were sent tothis area around King’s Cross to getall the footage and to go through it.Indeed, considering the concentrationof cameras, a very large number ofpeople were required.“But we were right... (We sawon CCTV footage) two young menwith rucksacks, followed by anothertwo... and following themwas this man with a briefcase. Hewill never be able to forget it – heis a Scotland Yard anti-terroristbranch officer and he didn’t noticeanything unusual about thosefour men with rucksacks! Whywould he?“We had a start. We knew thatthey were all together at that spot.So we tried to find out how they gotto King’s Cross. We started lookingbackwards, at the trains that came inat King’s Cross at that time; we thenlooked at the footage from the platforms...and we found them there.Soon, we knew on which trains theyhad come in. And then we were ableto go further back to follow their journeyand to find out the place fromwhere they had travelled.“And that, you may think, is that.But you also need to find out whetherthey are part of a cell, with whomhave they been in contact... and youneed to work quickly. And that’swhere CCTV is a phenomenal tool.We collected a lot of information andin a couple of days we knew wherethey had their bomb factory and wereable to find it.”Mr. Goodwin also screened CCTVfootage of a slip road leading up to aservice station. Even footage frominside the service station was found.It was taken around 5 in the morningand showed one of the bombers. Heknew he was going to blow himselfup, but he stopped to buy somethingto eat.It was a massive investigation andCCTV had proved to be an incrediblypowerful tool.While three of the bombers hadblown themselves up in the Metro,one had gone and detonated his bombin a bus. But had the bus been decidedupon as a target? Or had somethingelse occurred that had forced achange in plans?Once again CCTV cameras came tothe rescue and provided the answer.The fourth bomber had tried to getinto the northern line but it was shutbecause of some problems. Luckily,he had not exploded his bomb on theconcourse, during rush hour at King’sCross.He had the bomb on his back, heknew he wanted to detonate it, buthe just didn’t know what to do.Thanks to the CCTV footage, thepolice were able to see his movementsand also to see whether he wastaking instructions from someone.The CCTV footage showed thisfourth bomber wandering one wayand then another. (This man finallyblew himself up in a bus.)Mr. Goodwin rebutted the criticismthat CCTV only helped detectcrime, not prevent it.“I would say it does, but sometimesyou just don’t know what wehave prevented. The bombers thatstruck London two weeks later intheir attempted attacks is an exampleof how CCTV helped prevent crime.“We had a group which tried tolet off bombs in London but failed.I would put money on the fact thathad we not quickly apprehendedthem, they would have gone onand achieved their mission. Theywould have improved the designof their bombs and carried outtheir bombings.”On July 21, two weeks after theJuly 7 bombings with the whole forcebusy in the investigations, there werea further four attempted bombings.Yet the police managed to obtain allthe CCTV footage and to completethe investigation and to make arrests.In one case, the footage showedone of the bombers in a train attemptingto detonate a bomb in his rucksack.The people around him recoiledas he stood holding the rail and tryingto set off his bomb. Only the detonatorwent off and it was described as aloud thud.The footage showed people recoilingand a man in a white T-shirt whowas an off-duty fireman, remonstratingwith him... The bomber was saying,“No, it wasn’t me...”And then the tube went into a stationand the man escaped. He dumpedhis rucksack which offered a lot offorensic leads and evidence. TheCCTV had also provided a very goodimage.Within 24 hours the police hadimages of all the other bombers. Thesewere released and, because the communityhad confidence in the policeforce, telephone calls started pouringin, including one from the caretakerwho managed the block of flats wherethey were put up.He said they fit the description.They were up to something funnywith chemicals, throwing away plasticcontainers that smelt strongly (“aclassic symptom of hydrogen peroxide”).Although the police had the address,the men had fled – but becauseof CCTV, they were able to trackthem and by July 29 all four bombershad been caught.Some horrible mistakes weremade by the police on July 22,when an innocent man, JeanCharles de Menezes, a Brazilian,was shot dead in the belief that hewas one of the bombers. Unfortunately,this episode overshadowedwhat had actually turned out to bea brilliant piece of detective work.“To have attempted bombings twoweeks after successful bombings inLondon, and to catch people underthose conditions and in that short aspace of time, is simply stunningdetective work, but it wouldn’t havebeen possible without effectiveCCTV and CCTV management,” Mr.Goodwin added.The vote of thanks was proposedby Mehul Sampat.Getting private industry into policing has worked wonders, says Mr. Stuart Goodwin of Scotland Yard. At left is Mr. David Samwell of the OliveGroup, which has been associated with the London Police on counter-terrorism measures. President Pradeep Saxena (at right) presents a memento tothe guest speakerAugust 10 to August 16, 2010 THE GATEWAY, The Bulletin of the Rotary Club of Bombay Page 7