Danish City Prevents Vandalism and Violence

Danish City Prevents Vandalism and Violence

  • Oct 24, 2013

The city of Alleroed, in a suburb north of Copenhagen in Denmark, aims to stop vandals and violent individuals before crime is committed. A key tool for the municipality is XProtect IP video surveillance software from Milestone Systems. Mobile access means faster response and proactive intervention before situations can escalate.

The staff at a daycare center, located some distance away from inhabited areas, had complained that a young group was destroying things on the institution grounds after hours. The vandals had free rein for their misdeeds because no one was in the area after dark.

To solve the problem, Alleroed decided last year to install video surveillance in the institution in cooperation with Milestone certified partner Atea. In total, the municipality now has more than 100 cameras in seven locations - most of them Sony SNC network cameras, which are controlled with Milestone XProtect Enterprise IP video management software (VMS) and accessed using the Milestone Mobile client.

Spotlight on preventing crime

Danish City Prevents Vandalism and ViolenceUlrik Bjelbæk, deputy emergency response director and risk coordinator in Alleroed, sits in front of his iPad. Two clicks later, live streaming surveillance images from an institution appear on his screen. With one tap on his iPad he turns on a floodlight on the daycare center's roof gable and lights up the areas where there had previously been problems, which can now be monitored both day and night.

Another initiative taken to prevent vandalism and violence is the hiring of eight security guards who patrol the municipality in shifts. They access the video surveillance from their iPads using Milestone Mobile to determine whether they have to drive out to prevent criminal activity. In severe cases the guards will call the police.

"The new surveillance has been successful. There has been no vandalism since we got the new solution. Our security guards have kept a close watch and gone out there if they saw that trouble was brewing. But we still have some work ahead because our success depends on preventing all vandalism and violent crime in the area," said Bjelbæk.

Old technology gave bad images

"Previously, it was up to the individual institution or school to invest in surveillance, and many chose not to do anything. At the institutions that had old video technology, the images often could not be used by the police because they were of too poor quality," said Bjelbæk.

One of the places where the municipality still has old monitoring equipment is the sports center, where money was recently stolen from the girls' locker room. Here the security officer found images of the thief in the surveillance video, but they could not identify the person because the quality of the pictures was too bad.

Ulrik Bjelbæk looks forward to seeing the new equipment installed in several places in the municipality – a solution that was chosen after a thorough review of the market:

"We chose Milestone XProtect because it is so easy to access from mobile devices and the user interface is very simple, without too many buttons. Otherwise I would never get the guards to use it," he said. "It is also a great advantage that the system is scalable, so if the need arises, we can add new cameras from one day to the next."

Alleroed bought the cameras, software, and installation of the solution from Atea, who is a certified Milestone partner. They chose a solution in which the municipality pays a fixed monthly fee to Atea to use the system, with a service that guarantees timely technical support. It means that the municipality now has a better overview of the cost for repairs.

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