Page 22 - Campus Security & Life Safety, September/October 2022

Remote Possibilities
Ways to manage school safety and security even when you’re not on campus
By Bruce A. Canal
Remote Monitoring
It’s 3 a.m., and some kids decided to climb the fence and play a little touch football on the athletic field. The motion-sensing cam- eras trigger an alert. Who’s receiving that alert? And what can they do about it if they’re not onsite? In the past, they might have driv- en back to school to assess the situation or simply called the police to investigate. In the interim between the alert going out and respond- ers arriving on the scene, property could be damaged, or someone could have gotten seriously injured—a liability issue for the school.
If, on the other hand, the person receiving the initial alert had remote access to the school’s security system, it would be a different story. With remote access, they could pursue several actions in real time to mitigate the situation. For instance, they could turn on flood-
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lights or a siren to scare off the trespassers or broadcast a warning message through the stadium’s speaker system to vacate the premises. They could direct the camera to zoom in on the perpetrators and send a snapshot to the police for identification, or any number of other options right from their home computer, smartphone, laptop, tablet, or other mobile device.
Whether events happen during school hours, in the dead of night, or the wee hours of the morning, having remote access to surveillance cameras, door-locking mechanisms, and other security systems could make the difference between achieving a good outcome or a bad one. Remote access is a valuable tool to have in the safety/security toolbox, whether security officers are operating from a command center or
22 campuslifesecurity.com | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022