A network that connects security cameras in tens of thousands of supermarkets, banks and schools under police control to a main complex is set to be completed by the end of next year, Beijing News reported yesterday.

The new technology will help to speed up response times to emergencies, said Ma Zhenchuan, director of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Image identification systems will be installed at places where large numbers of people gather, such as supermarkets and marketplaces, to help to identify suspicious looking packages.

Through the analysis of the images on a computer screen, police would also be able to distinguish between things such as a fighting and horseplay between friends, according to Liu Song, an official in charge of internal safety affairs under the bureau.

He said that a possible stampede accident was avoided in October this year when a business promotion by a shopping centre saw huge crowds ahead of its official opening.

"After studying the information provided by the internal safety network, police in Xicheng District instantly informed the shopping centre to start business earlier than planned," Liu said.

More than 1,500 units, which also include petrol stations and kindergartens, in Beijing have already been adopted into the network to improve public security, said the report.

For example, a series of blasts were reported in an underground supermarket affiliated to the Beijing New World Centre and Beijing Railway Station square on July 8.

Within four hours, the police department concentrated and nabbed suspect Wei Haibo by studying the supervision video records in the shopping centre, police officials said.

Statistics indicated that more than 12,000 suspects have been arrested so far this year based on images from monitor cameras installed in financial units, police said.

Under the new network, it will only take the police department 10 minutes to check that all the 3,000 automatic teller machines (ATM) in the city are working correctly and not being targeted by scamsters.

(China Daily December 20, 2005)