New £250k crime fighting centre for Lancashire (From Blackpool Citizen)

New £250k crime fighting centre for Lancashire

6:10pm Thursday 18th June 2009

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By Ben Briggs »

A HIGH-TECH crime-fighting unit has been launched in a bid to tackle the most serious criminals.

Packed with new computers and large plasma screen TVs, the £250,000 command, control and briefing rooms at Lancashire Constabulary headquarters, Hutton, have been paid for from the sale of criminal assets.

Chief Constable Steve Finnigan marked its official opening earlier this week. Each room contains a number of large plasma televisions which will allow images to be captured and transferred from room to room in real time. These may be images of people, or property, anywhere in the world at any one time.

Detective Superintendent Dave Brian, head of the Serious and Organised Crime Unit, said: “This facility will be used only for the most serious investigations or possibly crimes in action, or instances where we are faced with very dynamic situations.

“It will offer us multiple surv-eillance opportunities and allow for really quick command decisions.

“Not only that, the money used to fund this development has come from the sale of criminal assets which means we are using criminals’ own money against them.”

Chief Constable Steve Finnigan added: “This type of technology has never been used by Lancashire Constabulary until now and it will allow us to make it even more difficult for organised criminals to operate in the county and bring to justice those people who, if undetected, would undoubtedly impose untold misery on our communities.

“The Constabulary is 100per cent committed to tackling serious and organised crime and we want to send a strong message to those engaged in such activity: you will be caught and you will be punished.”

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