Criminal Damage to motor vehicle - Unable to proceed - Help!

[BillyS]

A few weeks ago my car was parked on a residential road overnight, during the night the car was severely scratched with keys on all 4 sides (bonnet, boot, drivers and passenger sides) causing approximately £2000 of damage.

 

 

I reported the incident to the police, who sent officers out to take a look and log the incident. 4 days later I received a call to let me know they would be making enquiries, knocking on doors, looking for witnesses and for any cctv. The following day I received a letter (dated 2 days prior to the call) saying there was very little that could be done so the case would be closed. I called them back to ask what had actually been done, apparently they had made the enquiries and found nothing so closed the case.

 

 

I decided to take a walk round the area and knock on some doors myself, in doing so found a local business with infrared CCTV cameras, pointing in the direction of the space my car had been parked. Having spoken with the company they kindly reviewed the tapes, verified my identity as owner of the vehicle and found very clear, detailed video of the incident taking place and the face of the criminal. They offered the CCTV to the police to follow up but are unable to let me view the videos myself, apparently due to DPA.

 

 

I've since spoken with the Police who have been unable to identify the perpetrator as yet but are circulating this internally to see if anyone recognises them. They have however said that if no-one does they will close the case and not take the matter further.

 

 

If the police are unable to identify the criminal, how can I get the image to confirm whether or not I recognise them, was it personal??, was it a random drunk??, and further to circulate it more widely to bring the offender to justice? Additionally, i'm told there is a strong possibility that if they do manage to identify him then unless they are a persistent offender there is a strong possibility of a 'police caution'

 

 

I have read through the DPA as posted on the ICO and there doesn't seem to be any reason why I should not view this video, does anyone have any view on this, or otherwise how I might go about persuading the private company to release a copy to me without risk to themselves? If the criminal is actually identified, through whatever means, how could I go about bringing a private prosecution to recover my losses for the damage, rather than them getting off with a 'caution' ?

 

 

Many thanks in advance for your advice.

 

 

 

Sorry for the long post but - 'Extremely annoyed at being so out of pocket and potentially Mr Scott-free strolling around without a care in the world for their actions'

[BankFodder]

The data protection act is intended to protect people's personal data and roughly speaking personal data is data which allows people to be identified either directly or because of some cross-referencing system.

 

I can't see that the video footage that you're talking about can be used to identify anybody either directly or indirectly because you do not have the rest of the system.

 

Of course your problem will be to get the owner of the videos to accept this reasoning. Maybe you could persuade them simply to have a few stills of the responsible people.

 

Maybe they will accept the argument that not only is it not the kind of data that is protected by the data protection act – but anyway, this is evidence of a crime and in this respect it would be unlikely to be protected anyway – or maybe the company would simply like to practice good citizenship.

[SuperVillain]

Is this video footage not exempt from data protection provisions by virtue of s35 of the Data Protection Act?