This is a good article. It shows that there is still a large gap between TV/Filme and the reality of real surveillance systems. Its very hard to get an audience with the implementers on how they went about it. They tend to hide behind the security screen "I cant tell you that otherwise we would be exposing our weaknesses"
Big City PSIM Claims Reviewed
CP
The U.S. has one of the highest crime rates in the world. Within the U.S., Baltimore is one of the worst and its need for security and surveillance is particularly acute. IPVM recently participated in a tour of the city's command center during Secured Cities. In this note, we examine the system and some of the more unrealistic claims made.
System Overview
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Comments (13)
VK
Vasiles Kiosses
Nov 21, 2013
Derek Ward
Nov 21, 2013Very interesting article. I wonder what the response time is from when a surviellance operator confirms a suspisious suspect to a police response and possible arrest. Also, the section pertaining to a camera capturing a moving bullet at 30FPS had me laughing. The Citiwatch slogan "Beleive" sure is befitting.
CP
Carlton Purvis
Nov 21, 2013The response time is pretty fast. Operators have direct radio contact with police.
Luis Carmona
Nov 22, 2013People rarely want to admit mistakes in some things like purchasing decision and will try to put on a best face, especially when the public is there in your face judging value.
But overall I don't think it's a bad system. It certainly didn't need the embellishments.
Ari Erenthal
Nov 22, 2013There are only three statistics I care about, and I only see one of them: participation in arrest (which we see), participation in prosecution, and cost per succesful prosecution.
Arrest is nothing without prosecution, or at least an attempt at prosecution. And the NYPD's stop and frisk policies show that you don't need to have a lot of fancy, expensive technology to arrest everyone who looks suspicious or walks funny, just a lot of cops.
How can we evaluate the effectiveness of this system without these statistics?
ms
mark seifert
Nov 26, 2013A comprehensive study of the Baltimore PD was just released last week. At a cost of $285,000, the report discusses certain aspects of CitiWatch. As one of the most violent cities in America, I think one has to ask "What would the city look like without CitiWatch and how can CitiWatch become even more effective?". I participated in this tour and definitely learned a few things to apply in my agency.
JH
John Honovich
Nov 26, 2013Mark, thanks for sharing that. What cost $285,000? The report or the system? If it's the report, that sounds like a lot. If it's the system, that sounds way too low :)
ms
mark seifert
Nov 26, 2013John
The consultant's report cost $285,000. Not sure about the entire CitWatch system.
Christian Laforte
Dec 03, 2013"In a presentation at Secured Cities the day prior to the tour, he said other agency's cameras could be called up instantaneously, but during the tour, instantaneous often meant within a couple minutes, the time it took the system access the camera with a loading icon / symbol displayed for a period of time. "Instant access" is different than "access in two minutes," especially in an emergency or responding to a live security incident."
I find this problem surprising... we have delivered many interagency projects (e.g. safe city, defense) and we have yet to encounter this kind of issue. Did they provide any explanation on why this delay occured? Maybe there a "human in the loop", e.g. another agency's operator must first manually authorize the transmission of video to Citywatch?
Christian Laforte
CEO, Fortem
JH
John Honovich
Dec 03, 2013This is in the basement of the Baltimore command center:
It's a good question. Carlton and I talked about this before publishing. The cause was not revealed. Carlton can try checking, but Vidsys is long on marketing and short on real explanations.
Christian Laforte
Dec 03, 2013Thinking about it, there could be plenty of valid reasons to use a man-in-the-loop approach to authorize video transmission from one agency to another. Legal restrictions, minimizing upload bandwidth, preventing unauthorized information leak, etc. My bet would be on security personnel that routinely watch the public, but are afraid of being watched by other departments and being held responsible if something goes wrong. That kind of double-standard is almost the norm, and it's holding back a lot of potential cost savings and improvements in operational efficiency.
We are just finishing one interesting safe-city project that isn't held back by this kind of organizational fear, involving 6 agencies that want to share cameras and analytics. We had to extend a lot of our permission features, e.g. to support complex new rules to automatically grant temporary permissions to some cameras based on opened alarm type, escalation, location, etc. Some agencies have policies that restrict archive vs live feed sharing. Fun stuff.
CP
Carlton Purvis
Dec 03, 2013CP
Carlton Purvis
Mar 12, 2014Baltimore in the past said the operating cost for this system was $1.4 million annually and is now requesting an additional $700,000. The city also increased it maintenance contract to $8.2 million to account for "platform integration and a limited expansion of the system." All this after a review found the system had severe deficiencies.