An LA Experiment in Surveillance

How do Wide Area Surveillance systems measure up to IP camera surveillance systems?

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department wanted to determine if Wide Area Surveillance would work for them. According to the Center For Investigative Reporting, they chose Compton, an area long plagued by crime as their “lab”.

The Set Up

A civilian aircraft with several high powered cameras strapped to its underbelly was used to fly over a ten square mile area for six hours at a stretch all the while streaming live video of everything it saw in that time frame and locale. Similar to Tivo, the technology allowed them to rewind and view any incident they might have missed in real-time.

The Hypothesis

The premise was that if they could keep the area in their sights at all times, as soon as a crime was reported, the camera operator could zoom in and monitor the situation in real-time, gathering information for police officers on the ground.

How do Wide Area Surveillance systems compare to ground-based IP camera surveillance systems?

Wide Area Surveillance

Yay – According to CIR, this particular wide-area surveillance system was rated to be able to take in 10,000 times the area a typical police helicopter could. So it was more than capable of covering large swaths of the city to provide real-time surveillance and valuable leads to officers patrolling the streets.

Nay – On the downside, the individual cameras’ fields of view left a lot to be desired. In one case, a necklace-snatching on the street was reported, and the plane was able to capture the fleeing suspect’s car on camera until…… the car drove out of camera range.

Yay – it proved to be of forensic value. since the video could be rewound to trace a perpetrator’s starting point, his route, whom he met up with, and where. This feature can also be used internally to determine whether correct police procedures are being followed.

Nay – When it comes to clarity and resolution, the resolution of the images are not sufficient to produce identifiable facial features, thus they cannot stand up in court

IP Camera Systems

Yay – IP camera surveillance systems produce high-resolution images and have the zoom capacity to capture valuable details.

Nay – Since IP cameras are ground-based, they can not cover vast areas of the city at once as plane-mounted cameras do.

Yay- IP camera systems have the capacity to zoom in on faces and other identifying details, which the plane’s cameras could not. As a result, police and district attorneys are almost always able to use their video footage as evidence in court.

In an ideal World

In a world where municipalities had unlimited funds and access to all the latest technology, we might turn on the news and hear the following account of how police apprehended a suspect.

A male robs a bank. He is caught on the IP camera video as he exits.
Since it is always in “the right spot”, a plane equipped with wide-area surveillance cameras is able to follow and film his red Mazda, while keeping police up to date on his route of flight.
The robber drives into a municipal garage, managing to elude both the airborne cameras and on-the-ground police.
Review of the WAS video, stream reveals that in the midst of his flight, he drove under a traffic camera, and since he was speeding, it captured his license plate number, speed, date, and time.
License Plate Recognition determines that the Mazda is registered to a certain R.D MacThief residing at 7822 Slippery Street
An unmarked police car is dispatched there and discovers
the Mazda parked in front. They stake out the house, waiting for him to emerge so they can see if he fits the image captured on the bank’s IP security camera.
He does.
They take him into custody.

Kintronics doesn’t specialize in WAS but they are the experts in IP technology. If you want information about IP camera systems, call Kintronics at 914-944-3425 and speak to a sales engineer, or if you prefer, fill out an information request form.

Virginia Fair