In-Your-Face Bank Surveillance

Btw, those SunTrust camera look like a mini-dome popped on a stick. If there was a close-up / heads on shot that might help make it clearer.

IRIS is a bank surveillance specialist that offers both tower and teller sign cameras, like so:

So why put a dome on a stick when purpose-fit form factors like those above already exist? Price?

When I first saw it passing by, I immediately thought "how customer-friendly!" (NOT)

With the SunTrust bank in question, the entire bank is within a well-lit, large chain grocery store.... there is already surveillance everywhere, both inside and outside the building.

So if a robber was going to hit that bank, it is almost assuredly not a takeover robbery. Odds are, almost all instances where someone has robbed one of their in-store branches, that the perp slinked in like a regular shopper - probably wearing a hat to obscure his face from the numerous overhead cams.

So, the only really effective bank camera angle to provide shots the stores cams can't, is to mount them right on the counter facing up and at an angle towards the face of anyone standing in line.

That said, the placement SunTrust used in this location seems more intended to disuade the average store-bank robber from hitting them in the 1st place, since the cameras are so obviously aiming at their face from only 2 ft away.

Maybe it's an ingenius bank dummy cam array. Didn't see any blinking red lights though....

Go Longhorns?

Note, that is from a tower camera, a good example the difference angle makes from conventional, ceiling mounted cameras.

We used something similar to this for a university to capture pictures for student ID's in the bursar's office, but they were Logitech webcams.

They have these at self checkout at many of the home improvement stores in DC. This one is at a Home Depot.