The Elders are also calling for a better geographical distribution of surveillance cameras in the capital as well as an improvement in their use.
The Court of Auditors asks the Ministry of the Interior and the Paris police headquarters to better regulate the use of video surveillance cameras in the capital and denounces their financing “unsuitable and expensive“, in a summary made public Thursday.
Read also“To fear video surveillance is to be afraid of the police and of justice”
In this summary, addressed to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, the Court of Auditors makes six recommendations. Several concern the public-private partnership contract signed in 2010 to finance the “video protection plan of the Paris police headquarters (PVPP)“. Valid until 2026 and initially concluded for 225.1 million euros, the contract reached 343 million euros at the end of 2020, due in particular to the explosion in the number of cameras installed in Paris after the 2015 attacks (from 1,000 to 4,000 cameras).
An estimated cost of 481 million euros with the Olympics in Paris
With the 2024 Olympic Games, its total cost could amount to 433 or even 481 million euros, continues the Court, which calls for “outlaw» the use of this type of contract and its method of financing «unsuitable and expensive” in the future. The institution also recommends that the prefect carry out “without delay an evaluation of the effectiveness of the PVPP in the prevention of delinquency and the elucidation of offenses“, while the geographical distribution and the uses of the cameras”could be improved“.
Read alsoAmazon requires police to be more transparent about the use of CCTV cameras
The cameras focus in the “central districts of Paris and the main traffic axes (…) and not in the most criminogenic areas of the capital“, points out the Court. “There is thus less than one camera per 1,000 inhabitants in the 15th and 20th arrondissements, compared to more than eleven in the 1st and more than nine in the 8th arrondissement.“. It also calls for strengthening in a wayurgent“the internal control of the PVPP in order in particular to better detect non-compliant uses of video surveillance and asks the Ministry of the Interior to renovate the legal framework”unsuitable todayin the matter.
Questioned by AFP, the Ministry of the Interior and the police headquarters have not responded for the time being.