All trains to get surveillance cameras
Wednesday 28 May 2008
All trains owned by the Dutch Rail (NS) group are to be fitted with surveillance cameras in an effort to cut railway-connected crime, the NS confirmed on Wednesday.
New trains will automatically be given cameras and older stock will have cameras fitted when being renovated.
A spokesman for the company told news agency ANP that buses, trams and metro trains are increasingly fitted with cameras. ‘ We want to be able to see what has happened on a train,’ ANP reported him as saying.
The first trains to have cameras will be 99 new local service Sprinters, due for delivery at the end of this year.
There are some 5,000 incidents – including vandalism - on Dutch trains every year, the NS says. Of these, around 600 are extremely serious and involve violence.
Last month it emerged that the NS wants to equip a group of elite railway guards with handcuffs and truncheons.
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