Cathedral installs CCTV to collar criminals
A CATHEDRAL has installed 17 CCTV cameras to stop criminals using its grounds as a rat run to evade capture.
The labyrinth of passageways that surround Gloucester Cathedral has given shoplifters a quick escape route to other parts of the city, police said.
Alison Wright, a CCTV supervisor, told the BBC: “We lose an awful lot in the cathedral grounds with regards to shoplifters who run. There’s an awful lot of exits and entrances into the cathedral grounds; it will be brilliant that we can now follow these people.”
Theo Platt, head of development and communications for the cathedral, said as many as 56 incidents of anti-social behaviour in the grounds were reported in the first six months of 2017.
“It is our duty to make people feel as welcome and as safe as possible. That is why one of the measures we have taken is to install updated CCTV cameras across the site. It is a duty of care,” he told The Daily Telegraph. It comes after the cathedral faced objections from heritage campaigners who opposed plans to install the security cameras on old buildings.
Mr Platt said the cathedral has worked with Gloucester Civic Trust to minimise the harm to the medieval building. “Bearing in mind CCTV exists in most places, and Gloucester Cathedral is the most prominent building in the city, it makes sense for CCTV to be installed here as well because it needs to be a safe environment,” he said.
Atreasure of the church of St Nicholas, Gloucester, is a 14th-century bronze knocker, adorned with grotesque heads (now in the City Museum). The idea was that, to seek sanctuary from enemies or civil authorities, you could hammer at the door and be admitted to the church, safe from arrest. St Nicholas is just next to Gloucester Cathedral, where the opposite principle seems now to operate. The cathedral has been installing no fewer than 17 video cameras to monitor villains making good their escape through the many entries and exits of the ancient building and its close. Thieves, vandals and anti-social nuisances will be monitored by Gloucestershire constabulary, if they have time, from their control room at nearby Quedgeley. Even if they did evade capture, there is no eluding the eye of God.