Cleveland Police have been able to add a crucial rapid deployment surveillance tool to their armoury, thanks to the development of the world's most successful 12~660mm motorized zoom lens by Pentax.
The Cleveland Force is responsible for the policing of the four districts of Hartlepool, Lanbaurgh, Middlesborough and Stockton - an area covering some 230 square miles. The population of over 550,000 is split between high density urban areas and outlying small communities.
An ambitious and comprehensive policing strategy could be significantly hampered without the mobile surveillance kit that has been specially developed by David Horn Communications of Luton - a company specialising in work for government organizations.
According to Geoff Bwye of David Horn Communications, there is no comparable lens to the Pentax monster zoom, and so the biggest challenge lay in selecting the other kit components to allow Cleveland Police to deploy a surveillance system in under 20 minutes, capable of seeing pin-sharp images up to 3½ kilometres distant.
"Nothing comes close to the Pentax 12~660mm lens in the market for focal length or reliability," says Bwye unequivocally. "The only alternative we ever entertained might have been an adapted photo lens but it still wouldn't have been as good. With a motorized 2x teleconverter as part of the lens package, it effectively becomes a 1300mm lens. On a JVC TK-1460 lo-light camera it can observe activity half a mile away in astounding quality."
Made originally for the perimeter market, this is a new kind of use, that - thanks to its rapid and mobile deployment capabilities - represents an entirely new commercial opportunity for David Horne Communications in an otherwise untapped specialized market.
Broadly speaking, the kit comprises a housing, PT unit, battery pack, camera/lens combination and tripod.
It delivers images of the kind of quality that are either admissible as evidence in a court of law, or that can be blown up to poster size for display or exhibition purposes.
Everything from crime prevention to town centre management can be impacted by such a powerful tool. A brief overview of the area of the Redcar & Cleveland Borough outlines just how sizable a task this is. Sites that require response capabilities to a wide range of incidents include:
- one of the largest and busiest ports in the United Kingdom in terms of tonnage
- a local economy dominated by heavy industry and petrochemicals
- a nuclear power station
- an extensive network of chemical pipelines
- a potash mine at Boulby
- two league football grounds
- two prisons including Holme House category B prison
- an expanding airport on the doorstep
