Page 38 - Security Today, October 2017

Municipal Security
the entire city is covered. The police department is also working with Vulcan Security to explore the possibility of installing vehicle-level surveillance using Axis F Series cameras, as well as integrating body cameras. The expanded system will serve as a force multiplier for the department. In turn, the department plans to staff the Center with 11 more analysts in the next few years.
Significant Upgrades
The VMS combined with cameras provided a significant upgrade to the Hartford Police Department’s ability to prevent and effectively re- spond to incidents throughout the city. Milestone VMS is designed with an open architecture, enabling powerful integrations with third- party analytics software and technologies that help the police depart- ment save time and maximize effectiveness.
With hundreds more cameras now in place, the police depart- ment can view video from nearly the entire city. The responsive sys- tem enables analysts to quickly pull up video and view images to as- sist officers, whether they need to read a vehicle’s license plate or track someone running down a street. In the future, city officials plan to give local business owners and community groups the opportunity to install Axis cameras at their facilities. Owners would then be able to view video online, while officers and analysts would have access to the video should an incident occur in the area.
Creating Endless Possibilities
Sgt. John Michael O’Hare is the director of the Hartford Real-Time Crime Center. He worked with Tyler Cullen, director of information technology at Vulcan Security Technologies, to select the Milestone VMS solution that is in place today. The open platform gave the city much more flexibility and allowed them to integrate with analytics and other software platforms.
“There have been some good results and has great potential for inte- gration with the city’s data solutions,” Cullen said. “Once the cameras are fully integrated there will be cameras on street corners to automatically track the escape route of a shooter, in addition to other possibilities.”
The ability of the VMS to integrate with third-party systems was key for the police department, which has recently expanded to in- clude every residential zone in the city limits. In addition to a num- ber of other forensics, the city uses real-time analytics on cameras at public works buildings to detect objects left behind, potential threats, or to track theft.
“We’re looking at ways to integrate our 911 dispatch system with
Smart Wall pop-up views so if something happens in a certain neigh- borhood the cameras would automatically react based on the priority of the call,” O’Hare said.
O’Hare is also working with Cullen to explore the option of con- trolling the XProtect Smart Wall using voice and gesture activation by using Microsoft Connect.
The Crime Center integrated BriefCam video synopsis into the system, which helps law enforcement and security entities of any type to extract valuable, actionable information from the video. BriefCam enables rapid video review, search and analysis of video data for lo- cating events of interest more quickly than ever before.
“This has been a game changer for us. It’s helped us take our sys- tem to the next level,” O’Hare said. “We can do things now that we couldn’t do before. It allows us to take large volumes of video data and examine it very quickly and share that information with our officers.”
O’Hare explained that the BriefCam analytics provide access to information that they probably we would never have retrieved be- cause it would require someone to sit and watch many hours of video, in real time.
“It would take us forever to discover and share video informa- tion, and we can now do that in just minutes,” O’Hare said. “BriefCam doesn’t replace cops on the street, but it arms them with immediate intelligence that makes them that much more effective.”
Cullen added that integration was easy. A built-in net plugin al- lows users to access the BriefCam module from within Smart Client. This minimizes the system resource draw on the CPUs, and lets op- erators accomplish many things from a single interface, saving a great deal of valuable time.
Most recently, Cullen and his team have started integrating a sys- tem called HawkEye Effect, which ties the VMS to the city’s existing Shot Spotter system. When acoustically detected gunshots are detect- ed, HawkEye Effect takes the exact coordinates drives all positional cameras in the vicinity either to predefined escape routes or right onto the location where the shooting occurred.
“HawkEye Effect gives us a much better chance of catching a per- petrator escaping the scene, either in a vehicle or on foot,” Cullen said. “In certain scenarios, it could result in us actually spinning cam- eras to view the aftermath of a shooting. It’s a powerful integration to that wouldn’t be possible without the open platform.”
Preventing Incidents Before They Happen
The flexibility of the open platform has allowed the police depart-
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GOVERNMENT SECURITY OCTOBER 2017