Those lunatics that decided to cause misery and carnage to the streets of England should now be looking over their shoulder constantly.
Little do they realise that the police have more “tools” to catch these rioters than ever before.
So what are these tools:
CCTV – this is the obvious one. Wherever you go in a major city, CCTV cameras are everywhere. In London cameras are on the streets, buses, tubes, trains, train stations, housing estates, lifts and lots lots more places.
More importantly, a lot of the CCTV is linked back to a central monitoring station where the footage is recorded.
In addition news corporations, press photographers and members have their own footage which the police can request access to.
The police will browse through such footage to identify looters and rioters. Once a suspect is identified, sophisticated computer programs will be used to identify suspects on other cctv footage.
Mobile Phones – when your mobile phone is switched on it automatically scans for the nearest mast. The phone companies can provide the police with all details of those phones that were in the vicinity of the phone masts in the areas affected by the rioting.
In addition, details of all phone calls, texts and emails sent from within that area can be provided to the police. That information can be fed in to sophisticated computer software that quickly builds a pattern of mobile communication traffic in that area.
Oh, they will also be able to access any photos sent from a phone as well.
Social Media – it has been suggested that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter fuelled the riots. Ringleaders used social media to arrange gatherings etc.
If that was the case, the police will be analysing the information obtained from the owners of such social media sites.
Old Fashioned Policing
Then of course there is the good old fashion traditional policing. Targeting known individuals of the gangs that organised the rioting as well as forensics - matching glass fragments from shop windows, fingerprints etc.
Look at the guys trying to rip the TV of the wall in this betting shop – all have no gloves - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqj1N9qeWXI
Then there is the Bragging aspect of the rioters themselves. Many of the rioters will be bragging about their conquests to others by sharing stories via email, video sharing etc.
The police will be able to obtain access to all of their communication helping build up a case against the rioters.