Playing for Keeps

Oklahoma casinos take it all in with advanced surveillance system

Everyone in the security industry who has visited a casino has probably marveled at the level of preparation and care it must take to safeguard a gaming facility. Almost anything can happen at a casino, and security officials’ day-to-day challenges include attempts at cheating, slip-and-fall claims, underage guests, violence and crime. Add to this the inherently challenging conditions of a casino—flashing lights, crowds and plenty of noise—and it becomes clear that providing proper surveillance at a casino is a chore.

To lessen the problems and expense associated with frequent and unexpected security issues, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma has made an advanced surveillance system a top priority in its Broken Bow, Durant and Pocola casinos. And as the casinos have grown in size and popularity over the years, the need for a reliable system has become increasingly important.

Hard Evidence
 “It’s all about clarity,” said Dan Breshears, executive director of the public safety division, in charge of law enforcement, security, surveillance and integration projects for the Choctaw Nation. “People walk into a casino and see dollar signs. It’s all about, ‘How can I get their money?’”

Breshears said the three casinos were seeing several slip-and-fall claims each week, creating an opportunity for customers to take advantage of the Choctaw Nation.

“Some of the false claims, without [video surveillance] data, could easily go the other way,” he said. “Anybody can sue anybody. Because we’re a nation within a nation, most of our outside cases go to a federal entity—so we needed reliable video data.”

Breshears, who has a background in law enforcement, knew the casinos needed to be able to provide clear and high-quality video evidence to avoid being held liable for guests’ frequent slip-and-fall claims. As the number of customers increased in each casino, the security team also had to be prepared for an associated increase in crime and violence.

Breshears chose Petards to provide new cameras and a Universal Video Management System (UVMS) for Pocola Casino and Durant Casino. At Broken Bow Casino, however, Choctaw Nation would go in another direction: They would create a complete, end-to-end IP system.

Working Together
Petards, which is headquartered in Baltimore, Md., designs, manufactures, supplies and supports digital surveillance and security systems. Their UVMS is often used in high-traffic facilities, such as arenas, rail stations and city centers.

“UVMS excels in environments where there’s live monitoring and lots of cameras to view,” said Frank Baitman, president of Petards. “The usability plays a key role in making UVMS the best solution for live monitoring. You can simply move around hundreds of cameras to find what you’re looking for. If there’s a particular scene you’re looking to view from different angles, you can drag and drop all of the pertinent cameras while synchronizing them to view the same scene at the same time.”

At Durant Casinos, the Petards UVMS works with both analog and IP cameras—600 CoVi cameras, which are positioned over the gaming tables, and 212 IP cameras, including megapixel, PTZ and PoE cameras, from AXIS and IQinVision. The open architecture of the system allows Choctaw to freely choose the cameras for each part of the casinos, regardless of manufacturer.

“Open standards have been a key design decision behind UVMS since it was launched. Customers who are locked in to proprietary solutions are betting that the recording solution will continue to integrate new technologies as they’re invented. But we allow our customers to mix and match cameras and encoders with UVMS’s open platform. That way, UVMS future-proofs customer sites,” Baitman said.

Although Pocola Casino also received a UVMS, Broken Bow is the casino that has become a surveillance system showcase. The facility received all IP cameras, the IP recording solution and an IP access station and video wall. The casino features more than 200 cameras, recording at 1.3 megapixels or greater and at 30 fps on the UVMS.

“We knew that IP cameras were offering images that blew away the average analog camera, but we were a bit hesitant when Dan [Breshears] told us he intended to put in an all-IP casino,” Baitman said. “But his experience with UVMS gave him the confidence that it would be an unmatched surveillance system, and his vision was right.”

To compensate for the difficult lighting conditions in each casino, many of the cameras feature automatic iris control, which allows the iris aperture to change and maintain optimum light level to the image sensor. This is critical for capturing quality video images in the casino. Also, each system is on Choctaw’s network, allowing security officials to access surveillance data remotely and from PCs.

Faster Than Ever
“Perhaps the greatest praise for UVMS that I’ve heard comes from the surveillance technicians,” Baitman said. “When there’s something that’s just happened, they say they can conduct a forensic evaluation of the event in a half hour, while their old system took as long as three to five days.”

Breshears, who says UVMS has proven to be extremely user friendly, has seen similar results.

“The system makes things move smoother, and we’re always able to get a good idea of what happened,” Breshears said. “We just punch in the time something happened, burn the video off and send it over to our insurance guy or law enforcement. We can review a case, even before we get officers in, and we can see the data that shows whether or not to prosecute. Before, the clarity to be able to do that just wasn’t there.”

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