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Law Enforcement
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An eye inside for officers
IP video cameras in schools provides tactical advantage for public safety officials
Apr 29, 2005
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by James Careless
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When police responded to Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999, they knew shooting was taking place inside, but that was it. The absence of accessible video surveillance hampered their efforts to deal with the situation and to save lives.
Mindful of this, the government of Spotsylvania County, VA, is giving local police the upper hand by installing video surveillance systems throughout their schools. Better yet, the live video acquired by these cameras is being made available to the county sheriff’s police and fire officials in real time, including on the laptop computers carried in the county’s patrol cars.
The Need For Feeds
Located midway between metropolitan Washington, DC, and Richmond, Spotsylvania County is 407 square miles of mostly rural land. However, the county’s proximity to these two great cities is spurring urbanization; in fact, Spotsylvania is one of Virginia’s fastest-growing counties.
Scholastically, the county has five high schools, seven middle schools, and 16 elementary schools, with two more high schools being built to keep up with its burgeoning population. However, it was the lessons of Columbine that fundamentally moved the county government to start installing in-school video surveillance, although the demands of rapid expansion motivated them as well.
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| Spotsylvania County schools are installing IP-based video surveillance systems that county sheriffs can access in their patrol cars. |
“Anyone who does a cursory after-action review of Columbine will find that the responding officers were hamstrung by not being able to see inside the building,” said Greg Call, Spotsylvania’s IT business analyst for public safety. “The police didn’t know who the shooters were and where they were.”
In response to Columbine, Spotsylvania County’s schools received funding to install in-school video surveillance. “We said to the schools, ‘If you do this using IP digital cameras, we will be able to route your video over the Internet to responding officers,’” Call recalled. “‘In fact, anyone with access to our E911 Internet Center will be able to see what’s happening inside your school, from police and ambulance dispatchers to the guys in the responding patrol cars.’”
This is precisely what Spotsylvania County’s schools decided to do, with the assistance of CDW Government, an IT solutions provider that focuses on the government/educational market. The Spotsylvania school surveillance systems start with an average of 20-30 IP digital cameras strategically placed inside key school zones.
“We have them in high traffic areas such as hallways, entrances, and the loading dock,” said Call. These are generic fixed-mount cameras, rather than specific brand PTZ units. “We chose fixed cameras because with pan/tilt/zoom, you’re just increasing the chances of having problems. This is why some areas are covered by multiple cameras, each covering a different angle of view.”
The video from these small, IP-based cameras is routed into the school’s LAN, and then into the county LAN. From here, anyone with authorized access can call up the camera feeds using a Web browser.
“What they get is a schematic of the school’s floor plan, with a lot of little red triangles on it,” Call explained. “Each one represents a camera location. They just double-click on the icon and the live video feed comes up.”
In the sheriff patrol cars, the officers can access the same Web site through Sprint’s 2.5G 56 kbps CDMA network. (Some of the county fire trucks are also equipped with these laptops.) To view it, they use Itronix GoBook MAX ruggedized laptop computers connected by wireless modems.
To date, Spotsylvania’s five high schools have been equipped with IP digital cameras, with positive results. “Since the system started operation about five months ago, we’ve been able to use it when responding to fights at local schools,” Call reported. “Because the surveillance video is automatically archived on a server for 30 days, we’ve also been able to use the video to lay charges.”
Access In Perspective
Thankfully, no Columbine-scale events have happened in Spotsylvania County Schools, and with any luck they never will. But should the unthinkable happen, here are the advantages local first responders would have over their Columbine counterparts.
First, if a shootout did occur, police officials would be able to quickly assess where the shooters were, as well as who was in immediate danger. They would also be able to advise school officials on evacuation procedures — which exits were safe and which areas of the building needed to be isolated immediately.
Next, officers responding to the scene would know where to set up their command post, so that it was safely out of the line of fire. Fire/EMS personnel would be able to assess the level of casualties and what kind of equipment was required at the scene.
Most importantly, SWAT team commanders would have the ability to see what was happening inside, so that they could deploy their teams as quickly, effectively, and safely as possible. Once those teams were in the process of entering the school, the same commanders could track their progress and keep them informed of the shooters’ responses.
The importance of this last point cannot be overstated: The sooner SWAT officers can shut down the shooters, the less chance of civilian and first responder casualties. Also, quick response minimizes the chance for the shooters to take their own lives, thus depriving police of the chance to apprehend them, discover their motives and strategies, and use this information to prevent future attacks.
In hostage-taking situations — such as when terrorists seized a school in Beslan, Russia, last September and more than 300 casualties resulted from a shootout — being able to see what’s going on inside the school would be invaluable for government officials. In this case, it could help them minimize casualties should force be required, not only by accurately targeting the terrorists, but also by knowing if tear gas and other shock tactics could be used.
Finally, should the incident take on state or national importance, as was the case in Beslan, having surveillance video made available over IP allows any government official to see what’s happening to do so wherever they are.
The obvious usefulness of the Spotsylvania school video surveillance system provides the entire government surveillance community with some good arguments for further deployment. In a world where CCTV cameras are often viewed with distrust, Spotsylvania’s installation underlines just how effectively video surveillance can save lives and protect schoolchildren.
It’s a powerful argument, one that is unfortunately but undeniably strengthened by the 13 victims who died in Columbine. Having Web-accessible video surveillance can’t stop such shootings from happening in the future, but it can give first responders a chance to reduce the carnage.
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