Police and Crime Commissioner sees CCTV in action in Exeter
High-tech CCTV camera monitoring and a raft of other initiatives are helping make Exeter’s streets safer, the City Council has revealed. Alison Hernandez, Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon, Cornwall and the Isle of Scilly, was given a tour of Exeter city centre and shown how the City Council is helping to tackle crime. She was given a tour of the Council’s CCTV Control Centre, where staff monitor live footage from some 200-plus high-resolution digital cameras.
Cllr Laura Wright, Deputy Leader with special responsibility for the safety of women, said she was pleased to highlight recent initiatives in Exeter and the success of Operation Loki, which uses targeted neighbourhood policing to crackdown on crime and anti-social behaviour. Cllr Wright said: “I was extremely pleased to welcome the Police and Crime Commissioner to Exeter today to talk with her about how effective Operation Loki 1 and 2 have been in Exeter on a short-term basis, and to discuss the need for us to have increased officers here for the longer term. “It was a very positive talk around the productive partnership of the police and the City Council and other key stakeholders in the city.”
Cllr Wright added: “As always, I also welcomed the opportunity to catch up with the Commissioner about the Safety of Women and Girls at Night (SWAN) project, the very positive affect of Safer Streets 5 funding on our CCTV capacity and subsequent safety and the ongoing good work of the Community Safety Partnership in Exeter. “This is an area that we are both committed to as well as working together to address anti-social behaviour.” 
It was the Commissioner’s first visit to the CCTV Control Centre since the introduction of new and improved high-resolution digital cameras and infrastructure to support them. She was also able to talk to staff, with numbers having increased in the last year to help monitor the cameras thanks to funding from the Safer Street initiative. The Commissioner was also shown new signs that are being put up around the city, which display a phone number to call and an individual number which identifies where callers are.
These allow CCTV operatives to have sight of callers if they are nervous about walking alone or think they are being followed or need help from the police or other agencies.
The signs were brought in following campaigning by Tony Cox, whose daughter Lorraine was murdered in 2020.
“The Commissioner seemed impressed with the scale and quality of our CCTV provision in the city and took away some ideas about being able to improve and speed up the transfer of information from our control room to the police,” added Cllr Wright.