Webcam Aussie fights UK crime

Mean streets of Exmouth remotely purged

By Lester Haines, 30th March 2005

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

A public-spirited Australian has ensured that the streets of Exmouth are safer for decent, God-fearing citizens after tipping off local cops about an incident he spotted on a webcam in the Devon town.

Andrew Pritchard, 52, hails from Boorowa, New South Wales. According to the BBC, his little piece of the Lucky Country has only just been hooked up with broadband, and Pritchard wasted no time in availing himself of the net's finest content - the Exmouth webcam.

Pritchard takes up the story: "I checked the clock tower and then swung around the Esplanade and looked at the rain. I was about to log off when this car came along and stopped abruptly on the Esplanade. Two guys got out and headed directly to the kiosk, they appeared to try out the shutters, it looked like they were trying to break in."

The crimefighting Aussie immediately located the local police number and alerted the authorities before watching as "police officers arrived at the scene, with two running either side of the kiosk while another police car blocked the suspects' vehicle".

Mercifully, the pair of suspects turned out to be not a pair of rampaging ne'er-do-wells, but rather a couple having a bit of a tiff. Nonetheless, police praised Pritchard noting that they "always rely on public spirited people to act as our eyes and ears and to report suspicious activity at the time they see it". They added: "Needless to say getting information from the other side of the world like this is not an everyday event."

Quite so. Those readers wondering what on earth audio-visual producer Pritchard was doing logging onto Exmouth in his lunchbreak (3.30am Blighty time) should note that the webcam in question runs a continuous live feed reckoned by the Aussie to be "one of the best in the world".

Judge for yourselves here (be patient - Exmouth is currently unavailable due to excess media interest). If you do, however, get connected and spot Colombian cocaine barons exchanging high-class merchandise with heavily-armed members of al-Qaeda by the Seafront Swingboats, do your civic duty and contact Devon and Cornwall police here. ®