Tackling the Challenges
Advanced video solution increases public safety
- By Ralph C. Jensen
- Oct 06, 2015
Like virtually every municipality across the country, Moreno
Valley in Southern California’s Riverside County has faced
budget and security challenges over the past decade. As a
result of the downturn in the economy, funding for public
services had been cut, forcing Moreno Valley’s Police Department to
do more with less.
“The lingering economic recession forced cuts in all areas of
our budget,” said Moreno Valley CIO Steve Hargis. “After years of
dramatic reductions to all other programs, the City Council determined
that there were no alternatives to reducing Police Department
staffing in order to balance this year’s budget. The Council’s
investment in video technology became even more beneficial when
budget constraints reduced patrol officer staffing from 186 to 154
due to budget challenges.”
Addressing Concerns
To maximize the benefit of public safety resources, Moreno Valley
needed to leverage the latest technology in city-wide wireless video
to implement a municipal-wide system. Avrio RMS Group, a national
leader in IP-video solutions for the public safety market, designed
and installed a best of breed system for the city that consisted of an
Ocularis VMS from OnSSI, IP cameras from Sony, data recording
systems from Hitachi Data Systems and wireless technology from
Fluidmesh Networks.
“We saw two major benefits to the Ocularis system,” Hargis said.
“First, we prefer the licensing model that allows for unlimited concurrent
users. In line with Metcalfe’s Law, we feel that our system is
much more valuable by including as many users as we’d like. Second,
we recognized that integrations between Ocularis and other third
party systems would be more economical as they do not charge for a
SDK license.
“The city had a clear understanding of what we wanted the system
to accomplish, and recognized the need to outsource its design
and deployment,” Hargis said. “We chose Avrio RMS Group based
on their successful track record in city-wide video with municipalities
around the country. Avrio offered a level of expertise in design,
installation and maintenance of the system that met our city’s needs.”
Video cameras have been installed in public parks, busy intersections
and other key locations throughout the City of Moreno
Valley. The images captured at these locations are wirelessly transmitted
to an aggregation point and then transmitted to a control
center in the City’s public safety complex for monitoring and recording. Including the 48 existing cameras
from the Moreno Valley Police Department
(MVPD), the system features a total of 260
cameras. Three of the cameras are considered
portable for rapid deployment and 209
are deployed as PODSS—portable overt
digital surveillance systems.
Numbers Tell the Story
At each of the 74 locations where the PODs
are located, the installation typically consists
of a PTZ camera and one or two fixed cameras
facing in opposite directions. The combination
of fixed and PTZ cameras helps to ensure
that the entire viewing area is covered.
IP enabled speakers have also been installed
at the camera locations within parks. If individuals
are seen in a park after hours, an
operator in the command and control room
can log onto the particular speaker and announce
their presence. The ability to conduct
real time observation and take immediate
action means law enforcement can provide
an immediate on-site presence to help prevent
incidents from escalating.
Previously, if a complaint were received
about noise or rowdy behavior in a public
park, police were dispatched to the scene. In
these instances, not only were the police being
taken away from what might be a higher
priority response in another part of the city,
the dispatched officer had limited information
about what was taking place at the location.
The new municipal video system
resolves both of these issues by giving law
enforcement eyes on the scene prior to responding.
“The video system has proven to
be a valuable tool for the police department,
assisting in the prevention, investigation and
prosecution of all sorts of crimes and accidents,”
said Hargis.
The effectiveness of the municipal video
system is further reflected in the metrics
Moreno Valley has been keeping about criminal
activity, and the number of cases solved
with assistance from recorded footage. According
to Sergeant Jim Rayls of the Moreno
Valley Police Department, between April
2013 and March 2014, video assisted in the
investigation of 203 separate crimes ranging
from homicides to traffic accidents.
“High definition quality video evidence
from the camera system will also assist in
prosecution of criminal cases,” said Rayls.
Intelligent Control
To achieve such a significant impact, video
from the new cameras is recorded 24/7 in
real time and then saved for a period of 30
days. While storage for such huge amounts
of data is no longer so much of a financial or
technological challenge, managing, accessing
and using the video in an efficient and effective
manner required a sophisticated VMS
solution. The solution specified by Avrio
RMS Group features OnSSI’s Ocularis video
control and management platform to assure
these goals were met.
Moreno Valley’s video system features
two viewing locations—one in the Emergency
Operation Center and the other in the
Police Department. Video can be viewed at
both locations and from different workstations,
and operators can set up their views
according to what they want to see. The
Ocularis VMS features investigative tools to
monitor and interrogate data, both live and
recorded. Event management enables the operators
to call up live images and to program
automated rules-based alerts such as video
push or email alerts to relevant staff.
“The operators have told us they find
the Ocularis VMS easy to use and that its
features are robust and very applicable to
municipal video,” added Mark Jules, CEO of
Avrio RMS Group. “In particular, the event
driven alerts allow operators to handle more
cameras, which help in maximizing resources
and containing costs.”
Scalable and Future Ready
The video project was initially implemented
to address immediate public safety concerns
but ii soon became clear how much more the
technology could be utilized. Jules mentions
that the mobile features provided by Ocularis
may allow first responder-type applications
on tablets and smartphones.
The municipal system in Moreno Valley
is currently tied into the traffic camera system,
which includes cameras from its Public
Works Department. These cameras are on a
dedicated fiber network and are positioned
to move differently. By having access to images
from the traffic cameras as well as those
from the municipal system, operators have a
more complete view of city intersections. In
potential future phases, the municipal video
system may fully integrate with these and
other critical systems such as the computer
aided dispatch / 911.
“Ocularis’ advanced functionality and
compatibility allow us to extend the reach of
the network,” adds Jules. “We expect to have
more cameras in public places as well as in
private business or even in surrounding cities.
Avrio RMS Group is reaching out to the
business leaders and neighboring municipalities
in the area to explain our vision of a video
sharing program that will give the Police access
to their cameras in real time in the event
of an emergency. When businesses and surrounding
cities come together to share video,
our system will become even more efficient
and criminals will have fewer places to hide.”
“Video is an important asset and with
this system Moreno Valley has the option
to leverage its existing investment by adding
more cameras to the network with minimal
incremental dollars,” said Hargis. “Because it
is a wireless IP system, it’s relatively fast and
easy to add cameras where they are needed
in certain locations without having to cable
or trench. It is also possible for video to be
accessed from an existing camera that is
owned by a different entity such as a school
or business, giving us the potential capability
to transmit real-time images from privately
owned camera systems to the City’s monitoring
center with a minimal additional investment,”
concluded Hargis.
The city has a long-term vision for its
video system that is widely encompassing of
both the public and the private sector. “Our
vision is for our camera system to include
both private and other public sector (school
district, JPA, utility) cameras with the same
views as our existing cameras,” said Hargis.
“We recognize the future potential to integrate
into the Police CAD system so that priority
events cause our cameras to come to the
attention of people in the monitor room and
cameras relevant to the event turn towards
the event. At some point, our camera system
may even offer immediate access to cameras
all over the city, even inside a business, and
allow officers to evaluate situations within
seconds of dispatch receiving a call.”
Jules has some useful advice for other
municipalities facing budget issues but looking
to improve city-wide security. “Focus on
access to power for every piece of equipment
very early in the process. Also, it is important
to know that agreements to place equipment
on someone else’s land or buildings take
longer to execute than you’d think, and the
wireless design is likely to need equipment
installed somewhere inconvenient. And last,
agreements with state departments of transportation
can easily take longer than a year
to complete.”
This article originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of Security Today.