“Homeowner Accused in Court of Using ‘Invasive’ Night-Vision CCTV Cameras Mounted on Barbed Wire Protected Poles to Monitor Neighbors Amid Ongoing Conflict” – Top

A man used ‘highly intrusive’ CCTV cameras on 13-foot-tall poles to ‘spy’ on his neighbours after they became involved in a bitter dispute, a court has heard.

Kevin Grogan, 68, allegedly turned his home into what police described as more suited to a ‘nuclear submarine base’ with night vision cameras built with audio recording and protected by barbed wire. 

He also blocked off a public alleyway by filling it with discarded building materials and installing a locked gate. This prevented other residents from accessing it.

Grogan, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester is accused of defying police and the courts after being handed a community protection notice (CPN) following complaints.

A trial at Manchester Magistrates’ Court heard how Grogan twice failed to comply with the CPN in 2022 by not reopening the alleyway and positioning his cameras so they weren’t trained on public areas and neighbours’ gardens.

Ms Taneka O’Hara, prosecuting said the case related to a neighbour dispute after Grogan fenced off the alleyway and erected the cameras, which overlooked the alleyway and a neighbour’s garden, to ‘enforce’ his claim to common land.

She said it resulted in complaints from residents and Grogan was initially handed a community protection warning and then a CPN by police in March 2021.

He was ordered to stop blocking the alleyway, remove the building waste, the cameras and the poles but Grogan appealed and a judge revised the CPN in May 2022, requiring him to reposition the cameras so they only only overlooked his property.

But Grogan was still unhappy and appealed once more, the court heard, although this time his application was thrown out by another judge.

Former police sergeant Richard Garland told the court that he became aware of a dispute between Mr Grogan and his neighbour Mohammed Alam, 40, while he was still a serving officer.

He said he visited Grogan’s home, in Queensway, Rochdale, in February 2022 and observed the ‘highly intrusive’ camera system.

PS Garland said he also tried to access the alleyway but found it blocked off by a farm-style, padlocked metal gate reinforced by a wooden trellis.

He spoke to Grogan about the CPN the next day, he said, who wrongly told him that he had three months to comply with the order.

PS Garland said he put bin bags over the cameras to ‘nudge’ Grogan into removing them, but when he returned to the property in May the bin bags had been partly ripped down.

He later seized the cameras, but told the court that Grogan had then erected new ones.

Grogan denies two charges of failing to comply with the CPN by not removing ‘barbed wired festooned camera poles’ at his property, not sighting his CCTV cameras ‘in such a position they weren’t recording public areas and neighbours garden’, and not ‘blocking access’ to common land.

James Hudson, defending, said Grogan had a ‘reasonable excuse’ for having the cameras due to public order concerns and ‘harassment which escalated into violence’ by Mr Alam.

He said Mr Alam had recently been convicted of a public order offence following an incident between the pair.

Mr Hudson also disputed whether PS Garland had found the gate to the alleyway locked, but the officer said opening it would have been like ‘solving a puzzle’ because it wasn’t apparent how it had been secured and bricks and building debris were also blocking access.

PS Garland said claims by Mr Hudson that Grogan had been the victim of a ‘large number’ of harassment incidents had ‘not stood up to scrutiny’.

One alleged incident, involving Mr Alam’s partner, pointed to Mr Grogan and his wife being the ‘aggressors’, he said.

PS Garland insisted the cause of the dispute were Grogan’s cameras which, he said, were more akin to a ‘nuclear submarine base’.

He added that he’d hoped Grogan would comply with CPN so everyone could ‘move on’.

Residents had previously described Grogan as a ‘neighbour from hell’ and a ‘real pest’ and accused him of ‘spying’ on them.

Others said they were tired of seeing the ‘junkyard’ in the alleyway and losing the public space.

But Grogan denied this, saying the cameras were for his protection after he received threats.

The trial is due to continue next week.