Police Department Uses High-Definition Storage Solution As Part Of Video Surveillance Project

  • Nov 10, 2008

Pivot3 Inc. recently announced that the Paterson Police Department in Passaic County, N.J., chose the Pivot3 storage solution as part of a high-definition video surveillance project.

The department teamed with the City of Paterson to create a video surveillance system to patrol the city’s Urban Enterprise Zones, using wireless cameras, large-scale storage and intuitive video application software in order to increase the protection of the business community by making better use of the officers on patrol and speeding responses to calls for assistance.

The Urban Enterprise Zones (UEZs) cover approximately 45 percent of the city’s neighborhoods that are most directly linked to its thriving commercial activity. The goal for the UEZs is to provide a 24/7 video surveillance capability to deter and prevent crime.

“There are a lot of new rules and regulations that govern the storage and maintenance of video that will be used in legal proceedings,” said Angel Perales, sergeant at the Paterson Police Department. “We must protect the chain of evidence at all times, and Pivot3, through its reliable storage solutions, has become our partner in making that happen.”

In order to handle the large amount of storage required for 36 high-resolution cameras, the Police Department deployed 36 Terabytes of Pivot3 High-Definition Storage.

The Pivot3 clustered storage is an iSCSI storage area network (SAN) that provides 24/7 availability, high bandwidth and scalable capacity, and is a solid investment for the department since additional capacity can be added easily in the future if more cameras are added or if longer video retention times are needed. Installation and management of the NVR storage is intuitive, and it did not require any additional people or skills.

An area of concern for the Paterson Police Department is that its video files must be adequately protected and stored in such a manner that they are undisputable evidence admissible in court.

“When we were introduced to the Pivot3 storage system, we were impressed with its ability to store video and to be automatically protected in case of a system error. Pivot3’s own failsafe operational nature gives us confidence that our video is safe and that it will be there when we need it,” Perales said. “It is like having a dependable partner to back you up all the time. In addition, the Paterson PD must store its video for a minimum of 45 days. The three Pivot3 Databanks that are presently installed can easily handle this requirement.”

The Pivot3 High-Definition Storage system provides high availability by eliminating any single points of failure with any of the components. The police department has continuous data access in case of network failures, drive failures, and even the failure of an entire Databank.

Because video data is distributed over the clustered architecture, data is protected even if a Databank fails. Finally, the system dynamically rebuilds failed components without user intervention, so that the police department could continue monitoring crime instead of storage.

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