How To Beat Your Limited Public Safety Budget

“You know how it is, budgets are tight.”

If I had $3.2million for every time I heard that phrase coming from a law enforcement executive, I’d have a heck of a lot more money in the bank than I do today. Budgets are tight everywhere, and it doesn’t really look like it’s going to let up any time soon. Realistically, we’re probably looking at several more years of this sort of economic struggle. I’ve heard the optimistic and naïve say that we’ll be clear of this in 12 months, and I’ve heard the doomsday crowd preach that it will never turn around. Then again, they are also saying that the whole world is going to end in 2012, so I guess a
weak economy is the least of our problems.

With foreclosures on the rise, unemployment creeping up, and inflation knocking on our door, law enforcement and public safety budgets are feeling the crunch. Tax revenues are down, and with gas at four bucks a gallon, it costs more and more to keep those patrol cars on the road. Obviously, this isn’t the time to spend precious resources on fancy doodads like surveillance cameras, license plate recognition systems, and gunshot detection, right?

Wrong.

(You knew I was going to go there.)

To the Monday morning city council member, the solution to the budget crunch is to simplify and get back to basics: a cop with a badge and a gun in a car on the move. It’s cheap, simple, and effective, right? Not so much. Let’s break that all down. If you add up salary and benefits, overtime equipment and maintenance, liability and other insurances, facilities, supplies, and every other consumable that an officer goes through, that officer will easily cost the city government $125k per year or more. Sometimes, a lot more. Let's look at a 25,000 resident suburban town on the east coast with about 140 sworn officers. They are spending tens of millions of dollars a year on law enforcement, and they have one of the highest homicide rates per capita of any city in the nation. 95% of the crime in the city is centralized in 2 square miles. You could, quite literally, put an officer at every major intersection and most of the minor intersections. Of course, the citizens are screaming for more cops, more cars, and a bigger presence on Monday, and yelling for lower taxes on Tuesday. What to do, what to do….

I’m going to tell you what this town is doing. Six officers are retiring this year, and they will not be replaced. It’s reasonable to believe that three or four more will leave due to basic attrition, and these will not be replaced. The savings that are realized here, plus a nice injection of grant money, has given this city about $1.6million in “found money”. With this money, they are deploying gunshot detection across their high crime area, backed by integrated wireless surveillance cameras, and fixed license plate recognition cameras on the major entrances and exits to the area, as well as along major thoroughfares. Additionally, fixed license plate recognition cameras are being deployed at the city limits on the interstate and two state highways that feed the town. Finally, several of the pooled patrol cars will be fitted with mobile license plate recognition cameras. To tie this all together, these solutions will be seamlessly integrated together into a single interface that will make officer’s jobs easier.

Let’s get in to a little detail about what is going on here.

Gunshot detection systems are made up of a network of microphones. Simply put, these microphones are constantly listening for the sound of gunshots. When a gunshot is detected, the system measures the intensity of the sound across the microphones that picked it up and triangulates the location of the gunshot. A properly installed system can be very accurate at pinpointing the location of the shot. This process happens in milliseconds, and the gunshot detection server can use this data to trigger defined alarms. Usually this will be to send latitude/longitude info to dispatch, and possibly also to patrol mobile data terminals. In general, dispatch will know that someone is shooting long before the 911 calls start coming in, and it will report the location of the shots with much greater accuracy than the scared/drunk/crazy person who is calling the police.

License plate recognition (LPR) systems have been around since the late 70s, but the technological advances of the last few years have really driven down prices while adding functionality and usability. LPR systems are made up of several components. In most systems you have two cameras – a standard resolution IR camera and a higher resolution color camera. The IR camera is usually focused in such a way that most of the viewing area will be dominated by the license plate in question. The high resolution camera will give a situational awareness view that will give a view of the entire vehicle. The images from these cameras are processed in a way very similar to Object Character Recognition, or OCR. This processing is often handled by a small appliance computer attached to the camera, but some of the newer cameras have miniaturized this function to reside within the camera itself. Once the image is processed and the LPR system knows the license number, this information is run against databases of plates of interest. This can be the NCIC database, Amber Alerts, custom defined hotlists, or any other applicable database. Once a match is made, an alert is sent. In the case of mobile cameras, this alert is sent to the mobile data terminal, and possibly to dispatch as well, depending on the nature of the alert. With fixed cameras, this can be sent to dispatch, to nearby mobile data terminals, and to various other public safety facilities. This whole process takes less than a second, and it is not unusual for fixed LPR cameras on a busy thoroughfare to read and check 3000 plates an hour. For mobile cameras, many users are reporting 5000 plate reads per shift. Compare that to the 30-50 that most officers are able to input by hand.

Complimenting both these systems is the wireless surveillance cameras. These will be both covert and overt PTZ cameras communicating via a wireless mesh network, and in some cases, via WiMax. The real magic here is the level of integration. Most surveillance systems are reactive in nature. For most departments, when an incident occurs, they will go back through the archived video to glean forensic evidence. A well integrated solution can take surveillance to a whole new level. Let’s see how this all plays out…

It’s 2:30AM. The concrete of the city still holds the heat of the summer day, but the breeze carries the chill of the rain that will come tomorrow. This shabby park used to be filled with the happy laughter of children, but those kids grew up, and either wised up and left town, or turned to crime and violence. A shocking number of them bled and died right here in this park. If you know how to read it, the graffiti that covers every surface will tell you who is in charge, who used to be in charge, and who will be in charge next year. It will tell you where to find just about any vice you can think of. The rusty swings hang at an odd angle, blowing slightly in the damp wind. The grass has been replaced by weeds, and the streetlights reflecting off the dew gives the park a silvery, lunar glow. Here and there you can see the paths where thugs strutted and vagabonds shuffled across the park, knocking the fine droplets of water from the stems and stalks, and leaving trails like animals through an unkempt field. Some of these trails are made by predators, and some by prey. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell which is which.

The only part of this park that is still regularly used is the basketball court. You can’t really call it basketball, though. It’s really just something to do before the fight breaks out. The fight always breaks out. It’s been getting progressively worse. A couple years ago, it was some pushing and shoving, maybe a couple punches were thrown, but it was manageable. Now, more and more of the guys playing ball are wearing gang colors, and it’s not unusual to see the players pulling guns out of their waistbands and handing them off to their girlfriends before they take the court. These girls don’t mind, though. They’re carrying guns too.

The game is especially rough tonight. Most of the guys out here are wearing different shades of red. There’s a group in matching red bandanas on the bleachers, another with dark red t-shirts milling around the water fountain, and several of the guys on the court are wearing light red, almost pink, shirts.

An eight year old luxury car that had seen better days pulls up next to the court, and everyone stops what they are doing and begins to gather up. Out steps a tough looking man, early 30s, expensive clothes and the eyes of a hunter. This man carries himself like a man who expects respect, and if it is not given freely, he will take it. Everyone knows him. Everyone fears him.

The crowd gathers around him like the ghetto messiah. If he’s out here tonight, it must mean something big. The man is not happy. He’s been wronged, and by someone who he thought was a friend.

Chaos.

The crowd explodes. The timid run, or at least try to. The aggressive fight, hoping to claw their way up the ladder a few rungs. Within moments, it becomes a life or death struggle. Shots ring out. One…two…three four…five. Car alarms and barking dogs. A screen door slams. Screams, running feet. Squealing tires and a poorly maintained engine struggling to tear the car in half. Angry shouts. One two…three shots more. Breaking glass. A basketball rolls across the wet ground and bounces to a stop against a curb. At center court, a 17 year old boy is clinging to life. He used to say that he wanted to be a lawyer.

Less than 30 seconds have passed since the first .38 caliber bullet tore through the night. Already, every patrol car in the city has a shots fired notification flashing on their data terminal, showing them that five shots were fired on the basketball court, and three more about a half block away. The instant the first shot was fired, the 6 cameras in the park automatically adjusted to look at the shot, recording the entire event from multiple angles. The 4 cameras nearby automatically moved to get a good view of the perimeter of the park, recording everyone who was running from the area, as well as and vehicles. Officers on patrol have instant access to these video feeds, and know exactly what they are about to face. Officers in dispatch see that there is at least one serious injury, and emergency medical personnel are notified. Within 90 seconds, officers in dispatch have identified the shooter entering a green full size sedan. License plate recognition cameras pick up the plates info on this car, and instantly report the owners name and address, any outstanding issues with the car, and upload this data to officers on patrol with mobile LPR cameras on their vehicles. At the two minute mark, an LPR camera 8 blocks away alerts patrol that the green sedan has passed by. A moment later, a patrol car passing the opposite direction with a mobile LPR camera matches the plate, alerting the officer. The officer pursues the green sedan, and within 10 minutes of the shooting, a suspect is in custody, and a gun matching the description of the gun used I the shooting has been recovered from the green sedan.

Electronic crime fighting tools are force multipliers. Well planned and engineered solutions allow officers available to work incredibly efficiently. Even if this city had doubled their staffing budgets, the likelihood of catching the suspect in such a short period of time would be slim. The video evidence will also be invaluable during the trial process.

Let’s look past the quick political fix and get some real solutions going here, folks. Sure, “more officers on the streets” sounds great on stump speeches, and surveillance systems sound like big brother, but you can’t argue with the results!

You may have noticed that I did not mention any brand names throughout this article. If you are interested in getting more info on details, please contact me at hal@securityflash.net.