CCTV Footage So Poor It’s Unwatchable: Police

Up to 80% of CCTV footage seized by police is of such poor quality that it is virtually unwatchable, say detectives.

“Character development is haphazard, dialogue less than sparkling, and the pacing all over the place,” disclosed Detective Inspector Lomax Coriolis to startled fans. “Some footage doesn’t even have a dénoument, let alone a clearly defined six-act story structure.”

“It’s an utter fiasco,” barked Rendor Mandeville, Chief Constable of Berkshire. “Even when vital evidence is captured, officers do not want to sit through it because it’s so derivative. We assumed that more training would fix that,” he added ruefully, “but unfortunately the training was even duller, and officers just did not want to do it.”

Junior policemen described the evidence variously as “boring,” “worth the price of admission alone” and “madder than a hatful of monkeys on acid, on acid. But boring.”

Another small problem, police say, is that the cameras generally don’t work.

“Most cameras are stuffed full of straw and dead leaves, actually,” Coriolis admitted, “as a deterrent. Billions of pounds has been spent on state-of-the-art adaptive optics, solid steel chassis and hay, but at the end of the day, some form of recording device would probably have a bigger impact.”

He also pointed to a catalogue of mistakes with those that do function. In Ipswich, cameras were left unsupervised for four hours and developed a rudimentary form of consciousness. In Carlyle, a pair of cameras were accidentally trained on each other, by novice operators, resulting in the creation and instant destruction of an infinity of ‘mirror worlds’, “as real as our own, only more transient.”

One camera in Penrith was found to have been controlled by a gosling – for ten years. Since its installation, it has detected no crimes. Images consist largely of mother geese, v-shaped things and other goslings.

But Scotland Yard denied that CCTV was failing Britain.

“It can be crucial to some investigations,” the legal quadrangle said, “particularly terror cases, where standards are lower, due to the terror. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. In order to raise conviction rates, I plan to post footage on YouTube, with saucy titles, in the hope that conscientious net-users will spot something to arouse their suspicions.”

Another plan is to post images to websites frequented by footpads and hooligans.

“When criminals see the cinematic atrocities they have committed, they’ll be less cocksure, at least,” Coriolis supposed. “If the out-of-focus sight of the backs of their own heads and necks disappointing audiences doesn’t fill them with shame, then – bless my soul – I don’t know what will.”