Police impose 20 minute limit on examining CCTV for petty crimes

Petty crime cases where police have to trawl through more than 20 minutes of CCTV will be dropped
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Justin Davenport2 January 2018
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Scotland Yard will no longer investigate low level crimes if officers have to look at CCTV for more than 20 minutes.

Met officers have also been told they should drop investigations into thousands of offences if no CCTV is available.

The force’s new crime assessment policy is aimed at setting out the priorities for detectives investigating crimes in London as the force faces swinging cutbacks.

The policy lists more than 25 crimes that must be investigated, including homicide, firearms offences, sex crimes, hate crime and domestic violence.

However, lower level crimes, ranging from small frauds to traffic offences, are graded out if they do not have any obvious leads such as CCTV.

Met Deputy Commissioner Sir Craig Mackey said: “We do have to prioritise those areas where there is most harm and risk to Londoners.

"If you had no limit at all, do you seize every piece of CCTV - you have to have parameters to some of the investigations work you do.”

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