Cameras in Riyadh’s shopping centers to be linked to police

Fawaz Al-Maiman, a spokesman for the Riyadh Police, said that Riyadh shopping center cameras will be linked to the police department.
He said plans for this linkage come following the recent successful connection implementation between alarms and cameras at banks with police departments.
“We have already begun the implementation of the electronic experiment at Al-Naseem police station, where an integrated action team is working with a guard officer present around the clock.”
He explained that the guard will receive electronic alarms and handle them on the spot. “Manual reports will be replaced with these electronic communications, including the police center, the investigation panel and the prosecution,” he added.
The mechanism has been implemented over the course of three months, he pointed out, saying that information and evidence are linked together to minimize crime rates. “Once the experimental phase succeeds, it will be applied at police centers across the Kingdom,” he revealed.
Meanwhile, awareness mechanisms have been created to limit crime and theft by integrating the fundamentals of security behavior within school syllabuses in cooperation with the Ministry of Education.
“We always look into ways of developing the procedures we apply by working and cooperating with schools and by benefiting from international experience in this field.”
A big shopping center at Yanbu recently witnessed a robbery that was executed professionally. The thieves climbed in through the roof at the top of the center, entered through the elevator and then sneaked in through venting pipes connected to a wall. They then demolished the wall, disabled surveillance devices, broke into the safe and stole the money inside.
Other security reports have said that verbal harassment against girls represents 50 percent of the total number of reports received by police from Eastern Province markets, while quarrels and vocal fallouts amount to 30 percent and indecent clothing 10 percent. The same reports said that there are also incidents of pickpocketing, wallets thefts and purse-grabbing.
However, such incidents have decreased significantly due to extra precautionary and security measures taken at shopping centers, including the installation of alarms and surveillance cameras and the presence of security guards, the report said.