School cameras linking to central police system

By Wang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-19 08:06

Surveillance camera systems at primary and middle schools in Beijing will soon be integrated into the city's overall security monitoring platform, police said.

Li Zhiming, department chief of Beijing public security bureau, said all 1,807 primary and middle schools in Beijing have already been covered with the surveillance camera system and the bureau is coordinating with education authorities to bring it into the city's overall security monitoring platform.

Furthermore, greater numbers of police will join security guards at the schools and another 1,253 kindergartens to divert traffic and maintain order during school hours, Li said.

"We will set up a security net around the schools to ensure students are safe," he said.

Teachers believed the integration of the two systems would play a positive role.

A teacher surnamed Huang from Yangzhen Middle School's security guard department, in Shunyi district, told METRO the area where the school is located has a relatively high crime rate because it is at the fringe of urban and rural areas with a large floating population.

He added he once caught a man climbing over the school wall to steal things.

"If the two systems are connected, the police will be able to respond quickly when it happens again," he said.

He said about 20 surveillance cameras were installed at the school's front gate, playground, lobby and dining halls in 2005.

Parents welcomed the move, following the students' murder case in Fujian last month.

Cai Meng, mother of a grade one girl at Zhongguancun No 1 Middle School, said she hoped to see similar measures at her school.

"I was shocked when I heard that eight children had been murdered. It also upset my girl," she said. "Primary school kids are too small to protect themselves so the education authority should take every possible means to make sure they are safe."

A former community doctor in Nanping City attacked 13 children at the entrance of Nanping Experimental primary school on March 23, when crowds of students were arriving, leaving eight dead and five injured.