Video Surveillance Boom Puts New Demands on Cities, States
Recently, seemingly everywhere you look, stories fill the news about incidents between police officers and citizens. These polarizing events are accompanied by layers of complexity. And while there are no easy answers, law enforcement agencies have increasingly embraced wearable devices in order to provide more transparency to the public and to improve officer safety.
In fact, body cameras are not only improving safety but they can also help change the behavior of the people they’re filming. According to one study, the first year of a wearable camera deployment by the Rialto (Calif.) Police Department saw an 88 percent decrease in citizen complaints and a 60 percent reduction in use of force.
Additionally, Colorado’s Fort Collins Police Services initially pilot-tested wearable cameras on a foot patrol in the downtown entertainment district. The deployment was so successful that the force rolled out 60 of the devices. The department plans to expand the implementation to nearly 200 officers as budget permits, says Deputy Chief Cory Christensen.
The body-worn cameras are constantly recording, so once an officer hits the “record” button, the camera captures the previous 30 seconds of video. This 30 seconds of buffered video can be important and has captured crimes in progress. “It’s an uninterested third person’s view of an event and provides really good evidence,” Christensen says.
To discover how Fort Collins and other local governments benefit from video footage, see 3 Ways Cities and Counties are Using Video Footage.
Over the Airwaves
Surveillance video is just one of many bandwidth-intensive applications riding over today’s networks. To accommodate quality of service and the surging ranks of mobile users, many agencies have found they need to upgrade to the latest 802.11ac wireless standard.
In Oklahoma, performance of a new Aruba wireless network has been so good that IT leaders envision a day in the near future when they’ll no longer bother running wire to the desktop. Find out what benefits agencies have reaped from 802.11ac Wi-Fi gear in 802.11ac Wireless Quickly Pervades Government.
It’s our hope that the content on these pages will help provide some needed insights as to how agencies are successfully solving their complicated challenges.
