The first thing you see when you step off the train at Newquay is the police station opposite. A seaside resort, it is quiet now, but in the summer holidays it overflows. Hotels, bars and tourist shops litter the streets waiting for young people coming to party after exams and to surf at the nearby beaches. Local young people walk the streets, some in wetsuits, some in hoodies. The cliffs jut down from the edge of the road, where two teenagers fell to their deaths last summer after excessive drinking. Police officers patrol the town centre and the quieter villages further out.
The locals call them Robocops; police officers with three-inch cameras fitted to the side of their heads, electronic wires running down swollen, stab-proof vests. These new “headcams” are being rolled out across the county to combat teen drinking and antisocial behaviour, and to film culprits as young as 11 years old. It might sound like something out of a sci-fi novel, but the cameras are fast becoming part of a copper’s armoury.
“They’re a superb piece of equipment,” says Mark Bolt, an inspector for Devon and Cornwall constabulary, sitting at a table strewn with large black camera cases, batteries and wires. “Members of the public call in with problems of antisocial behaviour, we do a big blitz in their village or town centre for one week – and it all goes quiet. The cameras do not even have to be switched on – children behave better when they think they’re being videoed.”
The police officers say the cameras are overt, because they can be seen (unlike buttonhole cameras) and that they inform people when the cameras start rolling. Although, it is arguable how many of their inebriated subjects are in a fit state to understand. Officers in Cornwall’s headcam team say the footage frequently shocks the culprits, who are often “too drunk or stoned to remember” how they acted in police company.
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