In April of 2014, a series of incidents where over two dozen cars in Swieqi had their tyres slashed resulted in one resident taking extensive measures in order to safeguard her home and property. Michelle Sullivan, a resident from Swieqi took security measures into her own hands and set up her home with CCTV cameras that monitor her front door, driveway, street outside her home as well as the back of her home.

The Malta Independent met with Ms Sullivan about how to properly wire a CCTV system in one’s home, the effect it has had on crime in her street as well as the unintended, as well as intended backlash from hooking up such a system.

The incident that sparked the need to buy CCTV cameras took place on Triq il-Hemel as well as Swieqi road. Vandalism had reportedly been escalating for about 6 months until April, where it reached a boiling point with several residents waking up to find that their car tyres had been slashed during the night.  Ms Sullivan thought that her car might have been spared, however a few days after neighbour’s car tyres had been slashed she found that hers too had fallen victim to the act of vandalism. That very same day she decided that enough was enough, and promptly bought CCTV cameras, which she hooked up herself.

Ms Sullivan is a security engineer for computers with no formal education beyond secondary school; however she has had a very successful career in anti-spamming software as well as various other high positions in internet and software companies such as Netscape.

Ms Sullivan spoke about the two main issues one must keep in mind when setting up CCTV cameras, which are placing the cameras correctly in order to gain maximum coverage, as well as using the right type of surveillance for specific jobs, for example a camera that can support infrared imaging if it is to be recording during the night.

The biggest issue facing the setting up of CCTV cameras by local councils is the cost of running and monitoring them. In addition to this, Ms Sullivan stated that even if the local councils did set up cameras, the public would not have access to the footage due to data protection laws. Therefore, if any crime were to be committed against your property, it would be up to the local council to pass on the footage of the tape to the relevant authorities. Ms Sullivan went on to say that if people came together and installed cameras facing outside of their various homes, she could set up a network were through a username and password, anybody could access the live footage. In this way if a vandal where to damage your car, and ran away, through the access of footage from various cameras in the locality, people could alert the police of the vandal’s movements without having to risk leaving the house and following the criminal themselves.  

Turning to the effectiveness of installing the cameras, Ms Sullivan spoke of a few episodes were the cameras were instrumental in catching vandals in her street. Ms Sullivan recounted one particular incident where two Spanish men, in the midst of a loud quarrel had smashed the mirror of her car as well as a few others on the same street. Thanks to a resident of Swieqi following the men to their home and the video footage identifying them as the men responsible for the damages, police were called and the men were promptly arrested.

On another occasion, the footage from Ms Sullivan’s surveillance cameras was used to identify a man who had been checking for unlocked cars throughout her street, and rummaged through the belongings of those cars he had found to be unlocked.

Turning to the question of personal safety, Ms Sullivan said that she has no problem defending herself in the face of danger, however the situation where she was constantly finding her property as well as her car damaged became unacceptable.

Ms Sullivan has been approached in the past about organising a community action, and taking part in a Swieqi Security Committee due to her background in security systems as well as her expertise as a software engineer. In addition to this, Ms Sullivan’s actions have prompted neighbours to set up their own CCTV cameras outside their homes. She also added that two weeks ago a neighbour approached her and said “thank you Michelle, we haven’t had any crime since you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing”.  There has been a notable decrease in crime since the cameras went up and action started being taken against vandals caught on tape, said Ms Sullivan.