Law Enforcement
New Police Body-Worn Cameras Turned On By 911 Dispatch
As police departments around the world struggle with policies and procedures on the usage of body-worn cameras —especially when to turn them on— a new body cam and software solution is delivering on how to effectively get the camera to record at appropriate times. Equature’s Interactive Policing® Real-Time Software allows individual body-worn cameras to be turned on by police management or 911 dispatch control based on the first responder’s operational policies.
Digital Barriers Releases Live Facial Recognition System For Body-Worn Cameras
Digital Barriers has released SmartVis Identifier, which the company calls the world’s first live facial recognition system for body worn law enforcement cameras. The company integrated its EdgeVis and SmartVis technologies to provide defense, security, and law enforcement agencies with real-time facial recognition against multiple watchlists and databases. The SmartVis facial recognition technology, which was previously available for standard smartphones, has now been adapted to run live on Digital Barriers? body worn cameras designed for frontline law enforcement. Combined with mobile live streaming solution EdgeVis, it makes streaming from body worn devices both operationally and financially viable.
KC Police Plan To Outfit Officers With Body Cameras As Price Tag Reaches $6M
Kansas City police brass say their plan to equip hundreds of officers with body cameras as a new estimate puts initial costs at roughly $6 million. That $6 million price tag is expected to cover the initial start-up costs, equipment upgrades, storage expenses and hiring additional workers to manage the effort and to respond open records request for the video recordings. Officials have not identified a sustainable funding source and said it could take three years before officers can begin wearing the recording devices. The police board must approve the use of body cameras.
Miami-Dade Police Abandon Aerial Surveillance Plans
The Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) is scrapping plans to test persistent aerial surveillance technology following criticism from privacy advocates. This kind of technology has prompted privacy concerns in others cities, with Baltimore being perhaps the most notable. One of the best-known aerial surveillance companies allows users to keep a roughly 25 square mile area under surveillance and comes with ?Google Earth with TiVo? capability, The news from Miami-Dade county. while reassuring, underlines a number of issues concerning federalism, privacy, and transparency that lawmakers must tackle as aerial surveillance tools improve and proliferate.
Police Say Video Surveillance Helps Solve Crime Spree
With recent statements by Reno (NV) Police, arguments made by those against the usage of video surveillance —such as the ACLU— should start to understand that overall, video surveillance is indeed making an impact on crime. Many times, those arguments go along the lines that video surveillance does not decrease crime, only helps to arrest criminals. However, if the use of video surveillance is helping to capture, arrest, and prosecute criminal offenders, then that is removing criminals from repeating crimes and causing injury. Reno Police say the main reason detectives were able to solve this recently case was the quality and amount of surveillance video provided by victims and adjacent businesses.
Hidden Challenge Behind Body Cams: Storage
Police departments across the country are increasingly deploying body-worn cameras to better protect and serve their communities. Nearly every large police department in a nationwide survey said they plan to move forward with BWCs, with 95 percent having either implemented a body camera system or committed to doing so. However, medium-sized police departments (those with about 50 – 250 officers) appear to be facing the biggest challenges with when rolling out BWCs to their forces. The major issue is cost – not just for the actual cameras, but for handling the data the cameras produce. The demands for video storage are unprecedented for many police departments, which don’t have enough space on servers or hard drives to store the additional data.
OpenALPR Technology Announces New Features And Utilities To Aid Law Enforcement Investigations
OpenALPR Technology, a leading provider of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) software, updates its Cloud Stream service by introducing new features which augment license plate recognition and make third party integrations easier. OpenALPR has also added Webhooks to Cloud Stream which will make integrating with third party applications and web services easier. Users can send pre-defined alerts and plate group results to a URL from the Cloud Stream user interface. The Webhooks feature is available for Basic and Professional Cloud Stream users.
The Border’s New Boundaries, Part I: Digital Towers
In a dim, low ceiling room, federal agents and private contractors are testing the feed coming off cameras erected along the southeastern Arizona border. It?s a subdued project when you consider the magnitude of the goal: eyes and ears watching every movement along the U.S.-Mexico border 24 hours, seven days a week. The Customs and Border Protection agency uses two types of towers: integrated fixed towers (IFT), which use ground sensor surveillance in rural parts of the Mexican border, and remote video surveillance systems, which are used in urban areas where legal traffic is heavy enough to render ground sensors useless. The agency currently uses eight of the IFTs in southeastern Arizona and 11 of the remote video systems. It?s called the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan; and it?s a network of these towers, cameras mounted on pickup trucks and backpack surveillance systems that can be hiked into the desert and dug into the ground.
General Dynamics Obtains CBP FOC Status For Remote Video Surveillance Platform
General Dynamics’ Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) upgrade has achieved a ‘Full Operating Capability’ (FOC) designation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security?s Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This key milestone was achieved after two years of successful deployment and field testing along the southern border and underscores the operational impact this solution provides to the U.S. Border Patrol. The RVSS capability is currently operational in Nogales, Douglas, Naco, Yuma, and Ajo, Arizona, with relocatable deployments planned in McAllen and Laredo, Texas in 2017.
NYPD Sent Video Teams To Record Occupy And BLM Protests Over 400 Times, Documents Reveal
New York City Police Department documents obtained by The Verge show that police camera teams were deployed to hundreds of Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street protests from 2011?2013 and 2016. Originally acquired through a Freedom of Information Law request by New York attorney David Thompson of Stecklow, Cohen & Thompson, the records are job reports from the NYPD’s Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) that document over 400 instances in which the unit?s video team attended, and sometimes filmed, demonstrations. More important than the records the NYPD turned over, however, are those that it claims it cannot find: namely, any documents demonstrating that legal reviews and authorizations of these surveillance operations took place.
Chattanooga PD Chooses Total Recall Corporation To Provide Citywide Safety Solution
Total Recall Corporation, a Convergint Technologies Company, has been chosen to work with the City of Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Police Department to make their city a safer place. Total Recall will provide them with a citywide safety solution that includes 15 of its outdoor CrimeEye-RD-2™ rapid deployment portable video systems, the latest in its CrimeEye line of digital video solutions. The Chattanooga Police Department (CPD) has begun installing CrimeEye-RD-2 video units on 15 power poles throughout Chattanooga. The CrimeEye-RD-2 uses Axis Communications dome network cameras – managed by Genetec Omnicast™, an IP video management system?to stream HD-quality video.
Point Blank and Genetec Provide Body Worn Cameras And Case Management System To North Miami Police Department
Point Blank Enterprises (?Point Blank? or ?PBE?), the worldwide leader in the production of soft body armor and related protective solutions, announced that it has been awarded a five year contract by the North Miami City Council to provide the North Miami Police Department with IRIS Cam body worn cameras, together with a collaborative case management system from Genetec, a leading provider of open-architecture security and public safety solutions. PBE and Genetec will offer the city of North Miami Police Department an integrated system that combines 120 IRIS Cam body-worn cameras and Genetec Clearance™, a case management system designed to accelerate investigations by enabling different organizations to collect, manage and share video evidence.
Hackers Hit D.C. Police Surveillance Camera Network, City Officials Disclose
Hackers infected 70 percent of storage devices that record data from D.C. police surveillance cameras eight days before President Trump?s inauguration, forcing major citywide reinstallation efforts, according to the police and the city?s technology office. City officials said ransomware left police cameras unable to record between Jan. 12 and Jan. 15.
Genetec Announces ISC West 2017 Product Lineup
At ISC West 2017, in booth #28055, Genetec, Inc., a leading provider of open architecture security and public safety solutions will unveil the latest version of Security Center, its unified IP security flagship platform, as well as a new retail intelligence application targeted to retail marketing and operations users. The company will also showcase its new collaborative case management solution, Genetec Clearance, designed to help manage the significant growth of multimedia data in the law enforcement and public security industries.
Genetec Clarifies Digital Evidence Management With Clearance
With numerous body-worn camera implementations around the U.S. —and the world as well— the explosion of video feeds becoming digital evidence to law enforcement agencies, campus security departments, and corporate security organization is becoming a challenge to collect, organize, management, and retrieve. There are a number of on-premise digital evidence management (DEM) software solutions on the market where security departments —especially law enforcement— can enter the video feeds from those body-worn cameras, in-car dash cam video, cell-phone video, as well as PDF, word docs (such as police officer reports), JPEG photos, and other digital files. Enter Genetec’s new cloud-based digital evidence management solution, Clearance™, and you have a sophisticated video and digital file management solution that has a large focus on collaboration. Clearance also provides a dropbox-style video upload feature that allows individuals that have video footage (or other digital files) to easily upload their own video files.
DOJ Body-Worn Camera Policy And Implementation Program FY2017
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is seeking applications for the FY 2017 Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program. This program furthers the Department?s mission by supporting the safe and fair administration of justice.
Germany Approves Regulation To Allow Expansion Of Video Surveillance Network
Germany’s strict privacy laws prevent the widespread usage of surveillance cameras, but the coalition government on Wednesday approved regulation that could change things. Germany would allow more video surveillance in public places, under a draft law passed by the cabinet on Wednesday, reflecting growing security fears in a country that has for decades been wary of police intrusion. The bill was agreed in principle by the parties in Angela Merkel’s coalition last month, well before Monday’s deadly truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin that was claimed by Islamic State.
To Body Cam Or Not To Body Cam – One Police Department’s Question
There is no clear picture whether the Huntington (West Virginia) Police Department can, or even should, invest in body-worn cameras for its officers as circumstances now stand, Chief Joe Ciccarelli said. The potential cost – in purchase, maintenance and storage – could potentially drain hundreds of thousands of dollars from the department, Ciccarelli said, with the do’s and don’t’s still shrouded in a legal gray area.
PA State Senate Bill Allows Police To Deny Requests For Officer Video
Legislation approved by the Pennsylvania state Senate on Wednesday would let police departments across the state refuse public requests for copies of video recordings by officers, unless a court orders the release. The bill sets a sweeping policy to exempt recordings from body cameras and dashboard cameras from public records requests in Pennsylvania.
Genetec Announces Strategic Partnership With Point Blank
Genetec, a leading provider of open-architecture, IP security solutions announced a strategic partnership with Point Blank Enterprises (PBE) a worldwide leader in the development, manufacturing and distribution of high performance body armor. Through this partnership, Genetec and Point Blank will be able to offer law enforcement professionals a direct integration between the IRIS CAM body-worn camera and the all new Genetec Clearance™, a case management system designed to speed up investigations by allowing different organizations to collect, manage, and share video evidence and other relevant case information. Genetec and Point Blank demonstrated this integration at the IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police) conference in San Diego, CA.