Joburg is getting new CCTV surveillance cameras

The City of Johannesburg’s Metropolitan Trading Company (MTC)
is embarking on a high-tech upgrade of the CCTV cameras across
the city on behalf of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department
(JMPD).

MTC’s Field Service Technician Sipho Phakathi, who is leading
the Intelligence Video Analytic Platform project, said the city
this week begun a roll out of the first 50 high tech cameras,
which are fitted with the latest and smartest technology.

“These highly advanced surveillance cameras will be installed
in hotspots that have been identified by JMPD. There would be
placed in areas known to be high-crime hotspots where there is
a lot of traffic and concentration of people,,” said Phakathi.

According to Phakathi, the 50 new cameras are part for the
first phase of a pilot project and will complement the existing
normal 450 CCTV cameras across the city.

Special features on the new cameras include being fitted with
fibre networks and wireless connection, which enable them to
provide a sharper imager of a suspect. They also have the
intelligence to pick up suspicious patterns of movements and
immediately send a warning to the JMPD Intelligence Operation
Centre.

“You can practically programme the camera to have a facial
recognition capability, whereby if the same person keeps on
passing or moving in the same area multiple times, the camera
can be able to quickly pick up the pattern and alert the
control room. This also helps to detect a suspicious car that
drives around the neighbourhood through the number plate
detection,” said Phakathi.

He warned that those involved in criminal activities, including
those driving at a high speed on the city’s highways and
driving on dedicated Rea Vaya lanes will be nabbed quicker than
ever before.

“These specialised cameras can rotate at 360 degree angle and
can cover a distance of up to a kilometre with consistency of
clear visuals,” Phakathi said.

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Read: How much it costs Cape Town to
set up CCTV – and how successful they are at stopping
crime