CCTV Social: Re-generation. The Mall 2
Duration: 00:10:54; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 24.957; Saturation: 0.213; Lightness: 0.222; Volume: 0.160; Cuts per Minute: 15.227; Words per Minute: 197.395
Summary: For CCTV Social, Shaina Anand collaborated with Manchester Metropolitan University and Arndale Shopping Centre to open working CCTV environments to a general audience. People normally 'enclosed' by these networks came into the control rooms to view, observe and monitor this condition, endemic in the UK.
If the analog control room of MMU's Open Street Surveillance seemed 'just like 1984,' the CCTV control room of the Arndale Centre bore cold testimony to the much heard myth, 'the IRA bomb saved Manchester.' The mall was the site of the largest IRA bomb in the UK, (1996) and its rebuilding was the start of Manchester's regeneration program.
Get to know Arndale's embedded history, with a 'virtual tour' courtesy Gayle, security supervisor sharpshooter at The Arndale. Learn how and why the public are her worst enemy, who ought to realise that the mall is not a public space but actually private property, owned by Prudential and Peel holdings, who together own half of Manchester. 206 cameras in The Arndale, but they only police the 'open areas.' Stores have their own networked security chain, Store-Net. Stumble upon an ironic act of kindness, a prayer room installed just to stop people from looking for quiet corners which would be deemed 'risky'. Some providence: the location of the prayer room is the only place in the mall which has 2 static cameras (as opposed to remote pan-tilt-zooms) resulting in a 6 metre blind-spot.

Gayle: Working in... When I started, the Arndale was a lot more intimidating of a shopping centre. Whereas now it's a lot more friendlier, brighter. The new building has brought a lot more people and different clientèle to the Arndale centre. I mean, in all what lets us down is the parking because you're paying for it. Well, I think the Arndale malls themselves have gotten a lot cleaner.
Gayle: I don't know if you remember the old... (points to the old Arndale before the bombing) That used to be the bus station; bus station - Cannon Street. (Camera zooms in on Area 1 Winter gardens Mall Area.) That's where the bus station was, and then in between that was a market - a market where it used to be dirty, dismal. A lot of groups used to accumulate there, nothing but hassle with them. The market side gathering young kids and stuff. And when they did this development, it's taken five years to get it to where it is.
Shaina interviews Gayle, a senior security officer at the Arndale Shopping Centre, as she talks about the
IRA's bombing of Manchester and the subsequent
redevelopment of the Arndale. The clip shows a plasma screen, which has the Queen greeting Sarkozy on his first visit to UK in 12 years. It zooms out to a large plasma which has footage of a transparent escalator going up from Area 7, Roof Level Market Street.
Arndale
IRA
bombing
gentrification
reconstruction
redevelopment
security
shopping
surveillance
Arndale Centre, Manchester

Arndale Centre, Manchester
Gayle gives us a 'camera' tour of the
'New' Arndale shopping centre. The centre went through extensive redevelopment after it was badly damaged in the 1996 IRA bombings.
Gayle: (Camera zooms in on Area 1, Winter Gardens Mall Area) It's just a lot... That mall has got a lot of lights and stuff to make it... You know, we call that line the new building. (She switches the camera view to a top wide angle of both ground and level one.)
Colin: It's nice and bright, it's got some heavy glass windows.
Gayle: I know. That was the new build. At one time that was the posh area. (Camera view switches to Area 1, Halle Square, New Look) It was Halle Square. Whereas now the posh area is on the other side and poor Halle Square is a bit dark. It's got locals out here, it never used to.
Gayle: (Camera zooms in on Area 1, Halle Mall, Marsden Way) I think it would probably take this site to be done up soon, knowing they've got a lot to do.
Marissa: (Nervous laugh)
Gayle: (To Colin) Have you got 45 or 6, Colin? (She pans the camera 180 degrees and points on the screen to a glass tunnel in the far background at the end of the corridor.) That part was where it completely got demolished by the bombing; it was was by the MnS bridge link and the food chain area. This part was all done up. (To Colin) It got done up, should I say, Colin? But they didn't replace the escalators did they?
Colin: No.
Gayle and Colin: They left the old escalators.
Colin: The escalator, they moved six inches when the bomb went off.
Marissa: (Laughs)
Colin: They were supposed to replace them.
Gayle: (Camera switches to view a long transparent escalator that we see at the start of the film, that connects from the outside directly to level two of the mall.) And these escalators here causes nothing but hassle; it's always going off. There's always problems.
Arndale
IRA
architecture
bombings
building
gentrification
new
reconstruction
redesigned
redevelopment
replaced

Arndale Centre, Manchester
(A male voice radios in a message)
Gayle: A fight!
Paul: Roger.
Gayle: (Over the radio) Do you want us to watch one nine? Roger, near KFC? (Points to KFC's food station on the screen) No, we have to go back over there. (Camera pans right) There, there, there; go back, go back, go back, go back! Roger. Where are you now, Sally? Is it near KFC?
Sally: (Over the radio) Near McDonald's station.
Gayle: (Camera zooms in on the McDonald's food station) Station. Go back... There!
CCTV
Sally radios in to the control room and tells them of a disturbance around the food court area. Gayle tries to locate the source of the disturbance.
cameras
cameras
disturbance
response
security
surveillance

Arndale Centre, Manchester
Gayle: (Points to three people at the main entrance of the Arndale mall) All these people should be really moved out. You can see them smoking; our officer should be there saying "I'm sorry, you can't smoke here near the Arndale campus."
Colin: It's not because they're smoking, it's because they're blocking the doorways.
Gayle: Yes, but also our management should be sticking 'no smoking' signs. We do stats. Whatever happens today - from ejecting someone, to a fire reservation, to a first aid - there's a piece of paper there in front of you. You tick your box, you put your date, and put down on paper what your staff's done throughout the day. And they (the statistics) go on to the computer and accumulate what we've done. We've had a lot up to several hundreds stats a month, and sometimes our biggest stats are on smoking; moving smokers away, and asking people to stop smoking.
against
authority
cameras
control
job
logging
power
reports
restriction
rule
smoking

Arndale Centre, Manchester
Gayle: There used to be a lady on a P.A., and she used to come on with posh announcements like, "please keep your handbags with you" and all that sort of stuff. That helped as well, cause you heard the PA announcement that you weren't allowed to smoke.
Gayle: (Camera zooms in on people entering through the main entrance of the centre) What causes issues as well is that we haven't got no bikes, no skateboarding, no dogs. A lot of people say, 'Well, you've got no signs up' when they've got bikes with them, we've got no signs up when they've got roller blades on them. That we should put up these signs on the doors.
Colin: There's some smart-asses that always turn around and say,' You've got no sign here.'
Gayle: It's private property though, we have our own rules.
Colin: A lot of people don't realise that it's private property, it's not the public's. People are allowed to come in to shop. They are invited in to shop by the owners.
Gayle: It's partly Prudential and partly run by the same company as Trafford. What is it? Peel?
Colin: It's just...
Gayle: Peel Holdings.
Colin: Peel Holdings.
The conversation moves to the current owners of the Arndale mall -
Prudential and the
Peel Group.
CCTV
authority
building
control
footage
power
private
public
redevelopment
restrictions
rules
spaces

Arndale Centre, Manchester
Gayle tells us about
Store Net which is a two-way radio system that links Arndale and all other participating retailers, police and CCTV units to each other.
NBIS on the other hand is a 'crime reduction' software, it is essentially an online database that makes information about 'known offenders' accessible to public and private security set ups.
Shaina: Is there CCTV inside the shops as well?
Gayle: Yes, the CCTV... What they have, they sometimes have their own offices. You know, Store Net. So...
Shaina: Really?
Gayle: We're linked to the Store Net with the big radio over there. So if 'River Island' have a problem, they'll contact us on the radio and we'll send an officer in to assist. And then sometimes we've been called in to Unix (?) to look at their footage to see if we recognise who has done the... you know, the thieving.
Shaina: So what's Store Net?
Gayle: It's a City Centre link up to all the shops. So all the big... These, High Street car park, the main car mark has go, the main control room for CCTV of the City Centre up there. They're the eyes and the ears of Manchester like we're the eyes and the ears of the Arndale Centre. In the back room, there's a thing called NBIS at the moment, which is a company being set up by Mike ____ and he's the CCTV City Centre Store Net guy. And we're supposed to ... What we work with is, if we have any paper work or information on a thief, we know they can go on the computer and people at Bolton, Rochdale can have a look on the systems to see if they recognise the person we're dealing with, to what they're dealing with as well. And that's in the back room called NBIS.
access
business
crime
criminal
data
database
discriminatory
fear
information
paranoia
personal
profiling
retention
sensitive
suspicion

Arndale
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Gayle discusses the recording of incidents via CCTV.
Gayle: Even though we cover external, they've got a big camera for the CCTV outside as well. So if we miss anything, they can pick it up.
Jai: You can't speak to the officers through these?
Gayle: We can speak to the officers but can't hear what the public says to them. So unfortunately, when they get an abuse and you know people are winding them up, we're only getting camera footage which can sometimes not be...
Jai: Like if you swear back and you're on camera
Gayle: Yeah, you've go to watch your actions all the time. Big Brother's watching you in the public area now. But the biggest enemy is the public.
Jai: Yeah.
Gayle: Cause the people who'll watch the incident choose what they wanna see, and then they can go against us really.
Jai: Yeah. But do you get a lot of like people kind of getting involved? Do people tend to?
Gayle: You'll get the public watching and standing mostly, and then we'll ask them to move. You know we'll move them off, then they'll think we're being shirty with them because they think they have the right to do what they want in the Mall area. But it's not, it's private property. (Pushes some buttons changes feed; you can now see Shaina, Marissa, George and John walking.)
Gayle: Can I have forty five or six please, Marie?
IRA
aftermath
attitudes
authority
bombings
control
monitored
paranoia
power
private
public
resentment
security
space
surveillance
watched

Arndale Centre, Manchester
Camera follows Shaina, Marissa, George and John as they walk across Area 1, Bottom, New Cannon Street Mall. Camera switches feed to Area 1, Static, Inside Facing 24hr Corr as they walk up a flight of stairs. Camera switches to feed from a static camera again to capture a woman walking down a corridor. Shaina and the group walk across the same corridor. They come out from an escalator and Gayle switches feed again to follow them. They walk down the Winter Garden corridor as Gayle continues to track their movements.
Gayle: I've come from the old side of things, from the control room; when we had a smaller box room, and there were like three monitors to choose your screens from, and that was it. Whereas this is like Captain Kirk from a Big Ship kind of, you've got three desks to choose from and you've got more cameras. In total, you've got two hundred and four, two hundred and six with the two static cameras in the washroom and the prayer room.
Jai: On the what room?
Gayle: The prayer room and the washroom. Yeah, these two are static. These are the only two static in the mall area, they were getting changed when we first... We're left with two statics at the moment and we've got a black spot underneath (Gayle points to the screen) Now where they're walking. So the area right now is lost for a few seconds behind the camera there.
Jai: That's crazy, isn't it? So presumably... ideally, you would be out to cover every every inch and there would be nowhere where you couldn't see.
Gayle: We wouldn't have lost them then if we had a panoramic camera on the corridor up there. The thing of it is, these have ended up...
Jai: Do you just have to guess?
Gayle: No no, we just...
Jai: You don't know where they are ?
Gayle: We know where they are, but we don't know what they've been doing. You know what I mean? So... And there's another black spot, they've put stupid signs blocking our way and stuff you see. We've only got limited control.
John: So you've just memorised all of them?
Gayle: I know my cameras. (Laughter) You better get camera numbers in your head.
Jai: Yeah.
Gayle: And that's all down to your own knowledge.
John: They don't work sequentially at all?
Gayle: No.
camera
control
electronic
liberty
panopticon
paranoia
pervasive
power
privacy
security
surveillance
technology

Arndale Centre, Manchester
Four screens display live feed from different cameras. The camera zooms in to the view Area 3, Market 2 Door, Brown Court where two men on stilts walk around with yellow teddy bears in their hands.
John: Of people that you recognise? Is it a small group of people or...?
Gayle: We've got a book. A retail therapy. A retail therapy! (Laughter) A retail crime book. Therapy, that's what I need at the moment!
John: Retail therapy is better.
Gayle: Yeah, I need therapy a bit. And we've got our own pictures, and we've got people we know, and all of them who we've barred, and ASBOS on the walls, which are on the walls. Two people who've done major at the moment are on the wall there. And the retail crime book shows the regulars and we know all the names anyway... faces. What's been coming in, they've been barred, they've been given barring notices, but it doesn't work. They just walk in anyway, thinking they can be clever.
John: Yeah.
Gayle: They still come back. We fight a loosing battle with school kids.
access
control
crime
databases
discriminatory
information
personal
power
prejudice
profiling
retention
sensitive

An on ground security officer radios in to the control room and asks them to look for two 'suspicious-looking' Asian men. Someone alerted the security about them because they apparently these two men had 'something' taped around their chest.
Paul zooms in on the area near NEXT in New Cannon Street Upper Mall. Two men walk past the store, one dressed in white with a bag slung across his chest and the other dressed in black. The camera zooms out, shifts feed to New Cannon Street, main Mall area. Zooms in on a man 'of Asian appearance' standing near a window display with a briefcase in hand. The camera zooms out again. Pans right and focuses on another man of 'Asian appearance' with a white cap on.
Arndale Centre, Manchester
Paul: (over radio) One -nine, any message?
One-nine: Can you put camera on to lower angle... as possible... One is wearing a beige coat and one's wearing a black coat, and the one in a black coat is carrying a carrier bag.
Paul: One-nine, which one is on the upper mall and which one is on the lower?
One-nine: I couldn't tell you.
Paul: Two Five Five please, Sally.
Shaina: What are you looking for?
Paul: There's one of us who thinks... I'm just waiting for her to phone me actually. Two Asian males, one of them on the lower mall outside NEXT, and one wearing a black jacket and one wearing a beige jacket, but she couldn't tell me which one was walking by the lower mall.
(Phone rings)
Paul: Excuse me.
Asian
CCTV
appearance
bomb
description
discriminatory
ethnic
fear
footage
incident
minority
monitoring
paranoia
physical
profiling
racial
security
stereotype
surveillance
suspicion
youth

Arndale Centre, Manchester
CCTV
Gayle continues to look for the 'suspicious looking' Asian men that a member of the public had alerted security about.
Gayle: Hello... (The camera zooms into the store, NEXT, and focuses on a shopper browsing through the clothes) Has he got a hat on? Has he got like a black stripe near the jacket?
Shaina: So she couldn't tell you what floor they were on?
Paul: No, no.
Shaina: What were they...? And you don't know what they were up to?
Paul: No. What were they up to, Gayle?
Gayle: Suspicious, the way they were acting. They had someone saying that they had something like taped to the body.
Paul: Taped to the body?
Gayle: Yeah. Just some information from the public.
Colin: Quite often we get a member of the public say something to one of the officers and... And if the member of the public say that some one has got something taped to their body, it's suspicious acting. Yeah, so we will review it, we'll watch for it, and find out what it is if we can.
Shaina: Does that happen...?
bomb
description
discriminatory
ethnic
fear
incident
minority
monitoring
paranoia
physical
profiling
racial
security
stereotype
surveillance
suspicion
youth
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