A revolutionary, hi-tech system to help businesses report crime has been extended today by Birmingham Community Safety Partnership with the support of a range of partners to help businesses reduce crime and report incidents on-line. 11 of the city’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are set to receive the system which will then be made accessible to businesses within the individual BID areas. Three Business Improvement Districts are already signed up to the scheme, and more are expected to come on board over the next few months.
Businesses can use Facewatch, an instant crime reporting tool, which allows them to capture security related incidents and accompanying CCTV imagery in and around their premises; analyse the data in order to target harden their premises against crime; share watch lists with other businesses; and report incidents and statements to the Police as ‘digital evidence packages’.
Cllr James McKay, Cabinet Member for Inclusion & Community Safety added:
“Birmingham Community Safety Partnership is proud to support businesses in the fight against crime and understands that FaceWatch will play a crucial role in this. This web-based system will allow us to gain a truer picture of how crime and anti-social behavior affects our local businesses, helping us to develop our support for businesses in the future.”
Richard Thompson, CEO of FaceWatch added:
“We are really proud that forward-thinking forces, such as West Midlands Police, are using our platform to actively tackle low-level acquisitive crime affecting the day-time economy and supporting the night-time economy by tackling anti-social behaviour.
“Moreover, those forces using our public facing App, Facewatch ID, to post online the images of subjects of interest and asking the public for help in their identification have significantly increased the number of arrests for crimes that would otherwise have been filed.”
