Dutch cities are experimenting with surveillance cameras on their streets which “recognise” crime, in particular violence, RTL Nieuws said on Wednesday.

But the cameras also alert their monitors to innocent movements, such as children playing, and it is unclear how much use they are to local authorities and the police, the broadcaster said.

Trials are underway or are being prepared in Almere, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Sittard-Geleen while police in The Hague have been using the software for years, monitoring parts of the big city, Alphen aan den Rijn, Leiden and Zoetermeer from a central surveillance point.

Rotterdam police have also launched a three-month trial using the Oddity violence-detection software on 25 cameras in Rotterdam-Zuid. The same system will be trialed in Amsterdam, once internal rules for using the software have been finalised.

Oddity was first tested in Eindhoven in 2019 but, a spokesman told RTL, the council is currently not using clever cameras to monitor public safety.

Local authorities are allowed by law to monitor their streets and there are no specific rules governing cameras with extra software, although mayors have to give the green light. Footage can be kept for 28 days unless the police need it for an investigation.

In practice, however, the cameras often get it wrong, alerting monitors to a child at play or two gulls fighting over French fries.

“Sometimes it is difficult to see what is going on,” one official in The Hague said. “It might look as if a group of youngsters are fighting, but then you see them smiling and walking off arm in arm, so you know it was just friends fooling around.”

In Sittard-Geleen, where there are eight cameras, Oddity recorded 34 violent incidents in four months. But it also reported 96 incidents that did not involve violence but had been recognised by the software as such.

The aim is to help police officers or council wardens react more quickly,” said Bart Karstens of the Rathenau Institute, which investigates the impact of technology. “But that is not as easy as it sounds. The monitors have to look into all sorts of incidents which look like violence to pick out the couple that do involve some form of conflict.”

Supermarkets

The Jumbo supermarket group is currently testing out smart surveillance cameras in some stores in the Netherlands as part of a package of measures to cut back on shoplifting.

The number 2 Dutch food retailer said in January that shoplifting cost it €100 million last year and that it planned to take action. Shoplifting is a major problem in the retail sector and Jumbo estimates that €1 in goods is taken for every €100 spent.

The AI software, which plugs into existing security cameras, comes from French firm Veesion and works by alerting supermarket to staff instantly to shoppers who make “suspicious movements”.