Page 18 - Security Today, May/June 2022

Adding Force Multipliers Advances in video surveillance technology delivers additional help for cops
By Kevin Taylor
There are more than 600,000 state and local law enforcement officers in the United States. Impres- sive, but with a U.S. population of more than 330 million–and growing–they have their work cut out for them. A good percentage of the roughly 18,000 police departments in the country face increasing crime with the same or a reduced budget.
The good news, however, is that many are discovering how ad- vances in video surveillance technology can be an affordable force multiplier that delivers effective results and safer cities.
BODY-WORN CAMERAS
There are several advances in video surveillance that can directly benefit law enforcement. Body-worn video surveillance cameras have emerged in the last decade, but a recent study showed that only 47 percent of general-purpose law enforcement agencies use them (although for large police departments, that figure rises to 80 percent). According to the same study, agencies not using body-worn cameras stated cost–like hardware acquisition or vid- eo storage–as the reason.
Body-worn cameras are not only becoming more affordable, they are also more powerful and effective. Imaging and audio capture technologies have improved over earlier released offer- ings. There are models that are lightweight, robust, easy to use and can be turned on at the touch of a button with a buffer to include a certain amount of time prior to being turned on. Long battery life, field charging and fast offloading make them ready to go at a moment’s notice.
The benefit of body-worn cameras is that they tell the story from the perspective of the device wearer. But they also provide context for both sides of every interaction. With intelligible au-
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dio accompanying the captured video, body worn cameras tell the most comprehensive and accurate story possible.
In addition to providing better oversight and transparency, body worn cameras also have the potential to diffuse interactions. Some studies show that when officers wear body worn cameras, the conduct from both parties tends to improve.
Increased attention on police interactions might make body worn cameras an essential, rather than just a supplemental, tool.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,
ANALYTICS AND BETTER INFORMATION
Artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics can help police depart- ments with limited resources.
Video analytics help by creating searchable, actionable, and quantifiable intelligence from live or recorded video. Analytics enabled with AI can intelligently and accurately classify objects within a camera’s field of view–people, loiterers, crowds, cars and travel direction. These new data insights can help in real-time during emergency responses to create a safer environment both for the responder and for civilians in or near an area to which services have been dispatched.
The labeled data can also assist investigators who have tradi- tionally been tasked with the arduous responsibility of combing through hours upon hours of surveillance footage looking–for example–the blue car or for the person in the green shirt.
For departments concerned that deploying analytics means they must invest in more servers or storage, the emergence of edge processing is likely to make AI based analytic technologies more affordable and more scalable. Some surveillance cameras now include Deep Learning (DL) AI processing resources built directly into the edge device. Additionally, some VMS platforms
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