Page 44 - Security Today, May/June 2019

Video Surveillance
people, 17 officers is adequate,” Masterson said. “But for a violent town of 13,000, it’s woefully inadequate.”
Part of the city’s process for address- ing the problem was to form a committee of community members charged with pro- ducing a plan to reduce King City’s youth violence. After working for six months, the committee came up with a 23-point strate- gic plan its members felt would alleviate the problem. One of those points was to install video surveillance cameras throughout the city, which Chief Masterson says became a primary focus for his department.
“The idea for a camera system came to light because a city north of us has a cam- era system,” Masterson said. “When I looked at that and thought about what London and New York have, I saw a benefit of cameras from a prevention standpoint just to deter crime. There was also an investigative aspect that was attractive as well.”
Good Recommendations
Based on a recommendation from systems integrator SurveillanceGrid, the King City Police Department selected Hanwha PNM- 9081VQ 20 megapixel multi-sensor direc- tional cameras.
“I believe in listening to the people I’m paying, so when they said this was the right camera, we took their advice,” Masterson said. “They showed us the resolutions be- tween the Hanwha camera and others on the market, and it was obviously a much
better resolution with more frames per second, which provided us better visibil- ity with cleaner and clearer images. The Hanwha cameras gave us a much more de- tailed image at night.”
With four sensors with 5 megapixel resolution each, the vandal-resistant cam- eras offer triple codec H.265/H.264/MJPEG, combined with WiseStream II technology for ultimate compression without sacrific- ing image quality. Bandwidth efficiency is important because the cameras send video wirelessly back to servers located in a com- mand center within the King City Police De- partment.
The combination of leading-edge com- pression technologies has also been critical for reducing storage requirements. Initially, the police department used the Hanwha cameras’ on-board motion-based analytic to trigger recording but has since switched to 24/7 recording instead.
“We’ve found that if the cameras are re- cording all the time, they can often capture images outside of the motion range, so we’d rather fill our hard drives than miss some- thing that may be occurring in the back- ground,” Masterson said.
Capturing Video
In terms of placement, one of King City’s priorities was to install cameras in locations where the police department would be able to capture video of anyone coming into or going out of town. This was important be-
cause most of the shootings were perpetrated by people from outside the city.
“When all was said and done, we installed 93 cameras in about a three-and-a-half-mile area, with another 52 planned for phase two. So if you go from one side of our city to the other, we are guaranteed to capture you on camera,” Masterson said. “We publicized the camera system as a deterrent, letting gang members know we’re watching them coming and going from our city.”
The cameras are typically located at in- tersections the police department deter- mined to be a high priority for traffic flow and points of activity. There are four cameras mounted on a pole or light post at each inter- section. Three of the cameras face the inter- section, with the fourth looking at the pole itself, “for self-preservation of the camera system,” Masterson said.
Looking for
Relevant Information
Video is mostly used for investigative pur- poses. If an incident occurs, the first thing the police department does is review video to see if any relevant information was captured. This came into play early on, shortly after the first camera pole was installed in late 2017. With information gathered from a camera mounted at a local business, King City Po- lice Department was able to find a vehicle involved in a shooting rather quickly, despite having a limited amount of video to review.
“The vehicle drove by the only camera we had functioning in the city at the time within minutes of the shooting. The Hanwha camer- as gave us enough detail that we were able to write a search warrant on a specific vehicle,” Masterson said. “We seized on the deterrent aspect by making sure to include the fact that our one camera captured a shooting in our city in a press release.”
As King City looks to transform itself from a point of contention in a violent gang war to a safe place to live and work, Hanwha cameras have played a key role in the city’s positive results so far.
“We’ve been working to change things, and the Hanwha camera system is working wonders,” Masterson said. “Last year, we had 32 shootings and three homicides but since the cameras were installed, we’ve only had one shooting since the start of the year.”
Tom Cook is the senior vice president of sales at Hanwha Techwin America.
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GOVERNMENT SECURITY MAY/JUNE 2019