Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker has said there will be extra CCTV cameras added at the Howard Springs quarantine facility and the cameras now monitored 24-hours a day after the latest escapes, while claiming Wednesday’s escapees came up with the idea because he had to “put into the public domain” the existence of a fence jumper on Friday night.

Mr Chalker was speaking at a press conference this morning about the three teens (aged 15, 16, and 17) from the Binjari community who jumped over the perimeter fence between 4am and 5am and ran off before being found in Palmerston hours later.

He had told a press conference days earlier that internal CCTV gave police “a pretty good line of site” in monitoring people who left their accommodation buildings.

“It appears our patrols had recently just gone past and then they effected their move across the road and to then go over the fence and then abscond,” he said this morning.

“We track that then through our CCTV to identify what they were wearing and obviously mobilised our resources, and put the call out to the public once we’d established following the room audit that three were unaccounted for.”

He said the teens were found on the outskirts of Palmerston after running from police, and said initial information was they had not interacted in the community.

Mr Chalker said the Howard Springs facility was 66ha and he could not have “human resources on every single access and egress point” as there were more than 1500 people.

“It is not a jail. People who are in there are not criminals,” he said.

“What is concerning is that absconders have been somewhat at a higher pace in recent weeks. We are going to move extra mobile CCTV cameras to those areas.

“We’ve already bolstered additional resourcing. As I said when you are dealing with 165 acres you have to build a bridge of trust with people.

“The moment we see anyone move from within the perimeter of where the actual accommodation pods are we can move more swiftly to get to them. So we’re bolstering external security to provide assistance with that.

“As I say, increased CCTV, ensuring that is actively monitored 24-hours a day, so the moment we see any movement we can respond and try to keep everyone within the perimeter.”

The NT Independent is banned from attending the press conference and no journalist asked Mr Chalker if the CCTV was presently monitored 24 hours a day.

He said there had been thousands of people housed in the facility and only four people escape, referring to the escape of a man last week. There was however another escape in January of this year.

“What we’ve done in recent times, and sadly we know that youth learn behaviour from the poor action of adults. That absconder that went, and we had to put into the public domain that he had left, that male adult, probably sowed the seeds in their minds,” he said.

At a Sunday press conference, after the NT Independent reported that people had been busting out of the high COVID-19 risk red zones to mingle in other zones in the camp, breaching health directives, and potentially risking the spread of COVID-19, Mr Chalker denied this was occurring because of CCTV.

“We have CCTV within the facility that gives us a pretty good line of site that people are staying there. The compliance is very, very good,” he said on Sunday.

One well-placed source inside the facility told the NT Independent people breaching zones was at “record levels”, and people had been moving between the red zone and other zones, or from other zones into the red zone.

Chief Minister Michael Gunner had said the trio who escaped Howard Springs tested positive the day before.