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Policing - new material (91)

01 July 2010

A Vision for the Future, Gary Mason. Police Product Review Issue 40 (October / November) 2010, pp. 30-31. This article examines the “need to develop more intelligent surveillance systems that aim to relieve the users from overload and automatically detect and analyse unusual events and alert human observers only when appropriate.” Mason looks at a number of research projects to develop such systems including SAMURAI (which is funded by the European Commission with the objective of interfacing with existing CCTV systems employed widely across Europe), “a next generation CCTV system that will be capable of identifying and tracking individuals who act suspiciously in crowded public spaces.” Another example, developed by SELEX Systems Integration, is a close-area security system combining CCTV and radar technology, incorporating Friend or Foe (IFF) application “that is able to distinguish between a genuine intruder and either residual guard forces employed on mobile patrols or friendly response forces called in from outside.”

Ci fa vergognare, Gianni Barbacetto. Il Fatto Quotidiano, 3.11.10, p.4. This article interviews carabinieri who are deployed as escorts complaining that they have become “taxi drivers for [the PM’s] parties”, leading to them being “ashamed of ourselves” when they go on missions abroad and their counterparts mock them. “We can’t stand it any longer. We did not become carabinieri to guard the PM’s escorts”, the officers are quoted as saying, as they mention “several” parties and the arrival of an astounding amount of women, or accompanying VIPs to various venues where “maybe they use drugs or break the law and laugh at us, saying: we are safe here, we have the carabinieri to protect us”.