When it comes to preventing, solving and responding to crimes, police need access to information as quickly as possible.
With various technology innovations that have improved communication, surveillance and monitoring capabilities, many police departments have taken the initiative to upgrade their operation centers and police stations to improve the way they prevent and respond to crimes.
The City of Mobile Police Department, located in California, is one of these departments.
As part of its transformation towards an intelligence-led policing initiative, the Mobile Police Department’s Joint Operations Center (JOC) was in need of a technology that would enable intelligence-led policing through activities such as monitoring sites throughout the city in real-time, using the space as a command center during major incidences, and as a hub for strategic reconnaissance, cyber intelligence and regulatory compliance.
The City of Mobile Police Department worked with Christie and Atlantic Video Corporation to install a video wall within the JOC, which is managed by the Technology and Cyber Intelligence Unit.
The JOC video wall comprises a 3 x 6 array of Christie FHD552-X 55-inch narrow bezel LCD panels and 11 Christie Phoenix information management system nodes.
“I decided after looking at Christie’s products that the Christie Phoenix systems and Christie LCD flat panels would be the most forward-thinking pieces of technology that we could offer,” says Gary Crumbley, Atlantic Video Corporation, of the video wall solution.
“What really attracted me to Christie Phoenix is the fact that it is an H.264 open platform, so that you can truly collaborate with other folks. In the event that we build another video wall in another location, they can share all of the resources between those two video walls if they wish to.”
Since the installation, The City of Mobile Police Department has been able to operate on a much more intelligent level.
“One person pushing out information to 100 is better than 100 people pushing out information to another 100.” —Kevin Levy, The City of Mobile Police Department.
“The mentality of how the police department functions has gone from a mechanism of responding to crimes and proactive patrol to an intelligence-led policing model that was started in 2013 and basically drives everything,” says Kevin Levy, commander, technology and cyber intelligence unit, The City of Mobile Police Department.
“One person pushing out information to 100 is better than 100 people pushing out information to another 100.”
“I think the main driving factor is that we didn’t buy a bunch of monitors. We bought a platform that allows us to interact with Intelligence, and that’s priceless,” says Levy.
One of the initiatives of the Technology and Cyber Intelligence Unit is “Project Shield”. Through public and private partnerships, Mobile Police Department has access to over 3,900 live camera feeds throughout the city. The feeds are available to call up for real-time streaming onto the video wall in the JOC if a crime is in action, or to assist in an investigation or evidence collection.
“We challenge ourselves to determine how many cameras we can put up here and watch at one time, and how many maps can we put up on the wall. We do this so that we can prepare for any type of incident that happens,” says Levy.
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