The deployment of urban video surveillance is the fastest growing segment of the video world. The expansion in large metropolises to smaller burgs is unrelenting. In fact, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg once said that Americans should get used to “more visibility and less privacy,” because he predicts that “there will be cameras every place,” in the next five years in urban spaces.
So how do you get the community support to rally around the concept of public surveillance? How do you deal with the privacy concerns? How do you create a seamless relationship between the public and private sectors? What about funding?
With all the attention given to the proliferation of sophisticated municipal video surveillance systems around the world, it would be easy to assume that almost every major city has implemented a vast network of networked cameras to combat crime. Some of the deployment figures are staggering when you consider that Beijing has more than a half million surveillance cameras and London has almost the same covering close to 45 percent of the city’s public spaces. In the United States, Chicago’s Operation Virtual Shield (OVS), a Homeland Security Grid, is composed of more than 600 miles of fiber optics stretching across the city, while Houston and New York City are about equal in their deployment reach and advanced technology.
While the world’s urban map has certainly exploded with video surveillance networks and partnerships with the private sector to get them funded, not every city is where it wants to be when it comes to monitoring its business districts. But just because you don’t own the video network doesn’t mean you can’t be proactive and have a city surveillance plan. Chief Murray Farr, who is the head cop for Arlington, Virginia’s police department, says limited technology doesn’t mean limited options.
“The use of video surveillance is extremely limited in Arlington County. While the County uses a relatively extensive camera system for its traffic operations, these cameras are designed to monitor the flow of traffic and to regulate traffic cameras. Very little is recorded, and very little of the recorded [video] is maintained for more than a 24-hour cycle. The county does almost no video surveillance of its facilities and/or schools,” says Farr, who has been Chief since 2015, but a member of the department for 25 years. “However, whenever we have a criminal case, the police department works very closely with its private partners to obtain any of video that may have been captured within the vicinity of the event. We also have contracts with the Metropolitan Transit Authority to obtain video information on the Metro line, along with the Virginia Department of Transportation for the highways in the Commonwealth.”
It has been collaborative efforts that have sparked the inter-agency cooperation in information and cost savings for these systems. Perhaps the most dramatic example of cooperation between the public and private sector was seen during the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013. The use of video surveillance by law enforcement, with the cooperation of the private sector, not only captured the bombing events but was also a key to identifying the bombers themselves. It is estimated that the downtown Boston area has close to 150 video cameras and more than 400 on the city’s buses and subways. The speed with which the Boston video surveillance network aided in the capture of the bombing suspects was reminiscent of the investigation of London’s 7/7 bombings, where video was an integral part of the investigation.
As law enforcement agencies large and small are confronted with handling the overwhelming influx of data information that is expanding every day with enhanced video streams, social media monitoring, gunshot detection and video analytics, how do Chief Farr and other department’s around the country meet the challenge of this data tsunami?
Despite the lack of a city-wide video surveillance system, Arlington County has still faced some of the same staggering data storage and analytics issues as most large agencies. The police department currently uses an in-car video system and is also exploring the implementation of body-worn cameras. Farr says his agency also handles extensive recordings within in its criminal investigations division, maintaining all of the video tapes and audio for all investigation packages.
“One of the single largest challenges facing the agency is long-term storage and management of both video and audio data generated by the department. The Library of Virginia has a number of guidelines concerning the retention of audio and video materials marked as evidentiary. These range from 50 to 80 years of mandatory storage. As we evolve with body-worn cameras, there is an expectation that we will be maintaining a significant amount of data which will become exponentially more demanding each year as we have more and more data,” adds Farr. “The information that is generated from our in-car cameras, for the most part, is destroyed every 90 days other than that information marked for evidence. It is anticipated a much higher degree of evidentiary data will be captured on the body worn camera. However, time will tell.”
Farr sees his department looking to add to its list of technology projects when it comes to things like social media and records management systems (RMS). But he also stresses that very little money for any new projects is expected to flow through grant monies. The majority will be funded through the department's normal budget, seized assets or capital bonds.
“The single greatest recommendation I could make when dealing with complex technical processes like the introduction of a new RMS; if you’re willing to spend $3 million or $4 million on the RMS, just be willing to spend half a million on a top-quality firm that will help you develop and manage a very complex process. In our case, we hired an outside consultant and when we actually started to get into the requirements document for our new RMS they helped us identify almost 4,000 lines of requirements,” Farr says. “This went well beyond anything any internal candidate trying to do this job would have achieved. The consultant had a very long history of preparing RFPs for this type of technology and was instrumental in guiding us in the decision-making process, not only in the development of the RFP but in the selection of an alternate vendor and in helping us with the implementation as they were very familiar with the pitfalls in all categories.”
For agencies like Arlington and others looking to chart their technology and partnership roadmap for evolving public safety projects, the upcoming Secured Cities Conference in Houston on November 15-17 (www.securedcites.com) is a must attend event. It is the only public/private partnership initiative discussion for peer groups seeking answers on technology, funding, business outreach and peer experience best practices.
