Police appear to have had enough of seeing their traffic cameras being set alight by vandals, as senior officers filed a lawsuit yesterday with a prosecutor’s office against the “persons unknown” who have destroyed some 20 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras this week alone.

Assimakis Golfis, chief of the Attica Police, said the police force would also sue for damages once arrests have been made. Some 180 cameras in Athens, Piraeus and Thessaloniki have been destroyed by vandals over the last two years at a cost of about 5 million euros, Golfis said.

Sources said 104 of these cameras were part of the C4I security network that was set up before the Athens Olympics but is not being used now because of privacy law problems. The remaining CCTV cameras which have been destroyed were being used to monitor traffic. So far, five people have been arrested in connection to camera vandalism.