Serpo
28th February 2011, 03:49 PM
External security cameras coming to 'real time crime center'
By Tim Gurrister
Sunday, February 27, 2011 - 10:01pm
Watching you in April -- Ogden police hoping to have blimp in spring
OGDEN -- Attempting a police omniscience seen in only about 20 U.S. cities, the Ogden Police Department is gearing up for a "real time crime center" to be operational soon after its Crime Blimp launches.
The center hopes to eventually be linked with the thousands of private and government security cameras around town, including the city's own inventory of some 200 cameras.
Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Transit Authority are already on board to share their cameras with Ogden police in the video center planned for soon-to-be-remodeled offices in the department headquarters.
Officials are shooting for an April launch date for the blimp, under construction by Weber State University's Utah Center for Aeronautical Innovation and Design, which will feed video to a fledgling version of the RTCC. They hope the center is fully operational by July.
A civil rights debate is likely to flare at some point.
"Scary," was local defense attorney Bernie Allen's reaction to the coming integrated camera system and the blimp.
"Talk about your Big Brother, it's 'A Brave New World,' " he quipped, referring to two famous novels about futuristic worlds surveilled by oppressive governments.
An inventory of the city's central business district, between 18th and 28th streets, Adams and Wall avenues, has identified 37 businesses with external security cameras, said Dave Weloth, the OPD crime analyst who is overseeing the real time crime center's development and will likely be its manager.
Owners are being asked if they'll integrate their security cameras with OPD's, a slower process than Weloth's inventory.
So far, half a dozen have signed on, he said, although less than half of the 37 have been approached.
"After that it's up to the IT guys to sit down with them," said Weloth, referring to the city's information technology staff.
Included in the business district is the five-story Ogden 2nd District Courthouse, which has 40-plus cameras, mostly indoors, and several businesses with as many as 10 cameras.
"We're only interested in the external cameras," Weloth said.
The idea is to give officers information about a crime scene while they are still rolling up on an event in progress, officials say. Operators in the real-time crime center linking with any camera systems in the area can immediately relay information on what they see to responding officers.
"We're not taking control of anyone's camera system," Police Chief Jon Greiner said. "We just want to be sure it's recording."
Greiner said his research shows about 20 cities in the country that operate RTCCs, with New York City opening the first in 2005. He and Mark Johnson, city management services director, visited the RTCC in Memphis, Tenn., in January, he said. This week the city paid the manager of the Memphis center several thousand dollars for a two-day visit to consult about Ogden's center. Memphis' center is closer to what Ogden's would do than say, New York's, Greiner said.
An example of that is the license plate readers that will be tied to the center. Greiner hopes to purchase 15 or 20 of the $20,000 units to deploy this year.
Looking much like the head of the "Wall-E" robot in the movie of the same name, they can be mounted next to a patrol car's light bar to automatically read licenses plates, up to 3,000 in an hour, according to Greiner. An alarm tone would sound in the patrol car and the video center if a plate is on a stolen vehicle, for example.
"The center can e-mail the Blackberry of a detective if they find the plates of a vehicle that detective is looking for," Greiner said.
The Weber County Sheriff's Office purchased a plate reader system for one patrol vehicle there in September. A consortium of insurance industry professionals lends four license plate readers regularly to police departments around the state, Greiner said, some coming to Ogden for training in March.
Jess McLellan is the IT project coordinator given the task of integrating the many private security camera systems with Ogden's RTCC.
Some of the hookups will be as simple as exchanging provider and password information, he said, while others will require software exchanges "to make this dream come true, to give cops eyes on the crime scene before they get there."
UDOT and UTA are already tinkering with their systems to integrate with Ogden's, he said, and are completely on board.
One of the bigger challenges will be retaining video, McLellen said. "Being able to view an event in real time is one thing. Recording is another."
But he loves the blimp.
"I wont lie. At the beginning, I thought this is a little hard to believe," he said. "But after meeting with UCAID, it's obvious this is well-thought-out. I'm really impressed."
The blimp caused a stir when it came up during a Jan. 11 city council meeting, making the news nationwide, including NPR and a Jay Leno monologue.
Planned at 52 feet long and 4 feet in diameter to hold a 20-pound payload of cameras, GPS gear, and telemetry, the blimp will likely be the first to patrol the skies of an American city, according to Greiner and UCAID.
Greiner has been consulting with other cities that have real time crime centers and would like to do the same with the blimp, but no luck.
"Nobody else has a blimp," he said.
The blimp causes more heartburn to local civil libertarians like Bernie Allen, a defense attorney for more than 30 years, than do the integrated real-time cameras.
"If police can't go into your backyard without probable cause, then why would they be allowed to fly over your backyard with a blimp?" he asks.
"There will be all sorts of legal challenges. If something can't be seen from a public vantage point, then it's private and protected. A blimp changes all that."
"Is the blimp out looking for work?" asked Camille Neider, a former deputy Weber County Attorney turned defense counsel. "Or is it a reactive tool, sent to a chase or a search?
"If my 6-year-old walks away, then yes, it's great to have a blimp," she said. "But there's good with bad in any technology. You're depending on the character and integrity of the people using it."
"We're not interested in filming the city's 80,000-plus population," Weloth said. "Just the ones causing trouble."
He estimated that number as in the range of several thousand or more, including the estimated 1,000 on parole or probation and the 800- to 1,000-inmate population in and out of the county jail.
"From the blimp, we won't be able to see the marijuana plants you're growing between the rows of corn in your backyard."
http://www.standard.net/topics/ogden-police-department/2011/02/27/external-security-cameras-coming-real-time-crime-center
By Tim Gurrister
Sunday, February 27, 2011 - 10:01pm
Watching you in April -- Ogden police hoping to have blimp in spring
OGDEN -- Attempting a police omniscience seen in only about 20 U.S. cities, the Ogden Police Department is gearing up for a "real time crime center" to be operational soon after its Crime Blimp launches.
The center hopes to eventually be linked with the thousands of private and government security cameras around town, including the city's own inventory of some 200 cameras.
Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Transit Authority are already on board to share their cameras with Ogden police in the video center planned for soon-to-be-remodeled offices in the department headquarters.
Officials are shooting for an April launch date for the blimp, under construction by Weber State University's Utah Center for Aeronautical Innovation and Design, which will feed video to a fledgling version of the RTCC. They hope the center is fully operational by July.
A civil rights debate is likely to flare at some point.
"Scary," was local defense attorney Bernie Allen's reaction to the coming integrated camera system and the blimp.
"Talk about your Big Brother, it's 'A Brave New World,' " he quipped, referring to two famous novels about futuristic worlds surveilled by oppressive governments.
An inventory of the city's central business district, between 18th and 28th streets, Adams and Wall avenues, has identified 37 businesses with external security cameras, said Dave Weloth, the OPD crime analyst who is overseeing the real time crime center's development and will likely be its manager.
Owners are being asked if they'll integrate their security cameras with OPD's, a slower process than Weloth's inventory.
So far, half a dozen have signed on, he said, although less than half of the 37 have been approached.
"After that it's up to the IT guys to sit down with them," said Weloth, referring to the city's information technology staff.
Included in the business district is the five-story Ogden 2nd District Courthouse, which has 40-plus cameras, mostly indoors, and several businesses with as many as 10 cameras.
"We're only interested in the external cameras," Weloth said.
The idea is to give officers information about a crime scene while they are still rolling up on an event in progress, officials say. Operators in the real-time crime center linking with any camera systems in the area can immediately relay information on what they see to responding officers.
"We're not taking control of anyone's camera system," Police Chief Jon Greiner said. "We just want to be sure it's recording."
Greiner said his research shows about 20 cities in the country that operate RTCCs, with New York City opening the first in 2005. He and Mark Johnson, city management services director, visited the RTCC in Memphis, Tenn., in January, he said. This week the city paid the manager of the Memphis center several thousand dollars for a two-day visit to consult about Ogden's center. Memphis' center is closer to what Ogden's would do than say, New York's, Greiner said.
An example of that is the license plate readers that will be tied to the center. Greiner hopes to purchase 15 or 20 of the $20,000 units to deploy this year.
Looking much like the head of the "Wall-E" robot in the movie of the same name, they can be mounted next to a patrol car's light bar to automatically read licenses plates, up to 3,000 in an hour, according to Greiner. An alarm tone would sound in the patrol car and the video center if a plate is on a stolen vehicle, for example.
"The center can e-mail the Blackberry of a detective if they find the plates of a vehicle that detective is looking for," Greiner said.
The Weber County Sheriff's Office purchased a plate reader system for one patrol vehicle there in September. A consortium of insurance industry professionals lends four license plate readers regularly to police departments around the state, Greiner said, some coming to Ogden for training in March.
Jess McLellan is the IT project coordinator given the task of integrating the many private security camera systems with Ogden's RTCC.
Some of the hookups will be as simple as exchanging provider and password information, he said, while others will require software exchanges "to make this dream come true, to give cops eyes on the crime scene before they get there."
UDOT and UTA are already tinkering with their systems to integrate with Ogden's, he said, and are completely on board.
One of the bigger challenges will be retaining video, McLellen said. "Being able to view an event in real time is one thing. Recording is another."
But he loves the blimp.
"I wont lie. At the beginning, I thought this is a little hard to believe," he said. "But after meeting with UCAID, it's obvious this is well-thought-out. I'm really impressed."
The blimp caused a stir when it came up during a Jan. 11 city council meeting, making the news nationwide, including NPR and a Jay Leno monologue.
Planned at 52 feet long and 4 feet in diameter to hold a 20-pound payload of cameras, GPS gear, and telemetry, the blimp will likely be the first to patrol the skies of an American city, according to Greiner and UCAID.
Greiner has been consulting with other cities that have real time crime centers and would like to do the same with the blimp, but no luck.
"Nobody else has a blimp," he said.
The blimp causes more heartburn to local civil libertarians like Bernie Allen, a defense attorney for more than 30 years, than do the integrated real-time cameras.
"If police can't go into your backyard without probable cause, then why would they be allowed to fly over your backyard with a blimp?" he asks.
"There will be all sorts of legal challenges. If something can't be seen from a public vantage point, then it's private and protected. A blimp changes all that."
"Is the blimp out looking for work?" asked Camille Neider, a former deputy Weber County Attorney turned defense counsel. "Or is it a reactive tool, sent to a chase or a search?
"If my 6-year-old walks away, then yes, it's great to have a blimp," she said. "But there's good with bad in any technology. You're depending on the character and integrity of the people using it."
"We're not interested in filming the city's 80,000-plus population," Weloth said. "Just the ones causing trouble."
He estimated that number as in the range of several thousand or more, including the estimated 1,000 on parole or probation and the 800- to 1,000-inmate population in and out of the county jail.
"From the blimp, we won't be able to see the marijuana plants you're growing between the rows of corn in your backyard."
http://www.standard.net/topics/ogden-police-department/2011/02/27/external-security-cameras-coming-real-time-crime-center