Police Buys FLIR at Costco, Industry's Worst Fear

"To further save costs, the cameras are being installed by a county work crew."

In my county, 'work crews' are composed of inmates and those doing community service time. I just wanted to emphasize the irony here.

Amazing how calling it a "FLIR security system" sounds so much better than "Costco Camera Kit"...

I hate to quote myself, but I run into the problem of extremely price sensitive customers with high end security needs all the time, and so I wrote this detailing how a salesperson should proceed in that situation.

Sorry about the self promotion.

"These Costco cameras are not a panacea," Draper said. "It's an interim system."

Hopefully; not hey! These kickass! Let's save money and install these.

The sidebar to this story is the fact that this same jail currently has 3 of their own former correctional officers on trial for murder - they (allegedly) beat to death a mentally ill inmate in this facility.

So, the sheriff wanted cameras - and learned that not only would the cost be as described above - but that the process could take up to 2 years to complete.

The sheriff needed something now to show she was taking steps to make sure this kind of thing couldn't happen again. The civil lawsuits they will certainly face once the criminal trials are over will be significant - and not having cameras installed for 2 years could certainly be used by the litigants attorneys to show that the sheriff has done nothing to try and prevent future beatings/killings.

So, I don't think this situation is any kind of harbinger of what integrators will see in the foreseeable future - at least when it comes to federal/state/local govt facilities.

Several years ago, right before our state budget tanked "HARD" A new police chief asked me if we could improve safety operations in our coliseum with cameras. I was excited about the idea. I was aware of the force multiplying effects and how useful video can be in event management as well as criminal investigation. We had no cameras at all and I was told that whatever we did needed to be done below the price threshold that would trigger the long and more complicated procurement process.

I, knowing nothing at all about cameras, found and ordered an 8 camera analogue set with a DVR that came very much complete. The week it arrived the budget died. It was so bad that I was told that we had a great idea, but we can't even pay for our own facilities folks to install it.

I got to learn more about camera systems than I expected. Two of us, me and another police officer, did the installation. I actually got pretty good support from the company and we were successful atgetting things working. For me learning about using baluns and cat 5 to carry signal beyond the normal range of the coax was kind of cool. Repeatedly climbing a ladder to work in the drop ceiling and working on a catwalk 70+ feet off the floor were also not my favorite new things.

Once it was working it nearly paid for itself in the first month. Damage done, and denied, by an outside contractor was recorded. We were able to save the school around $1500. The facility staff was so impressed that they also invested in almost the same system. The difference in their purchase was that we saw that our lower end cameras were better suited for small rooms and were of limited benefit so they went with only four cameras, and chose better cameras.

Bottom line: Between the two Purchases we had just over $5,000 in putting up and recording 12 cameras in a facility that had previously had none. These two systems functioned fairly well for over 7 years with a few minor replacements. One replacement had a big impact. We replaced one of the cameras in the large seated area with a pretty capable PTZ. As you all surely know the difference in utility for that application was amazing. Our whole campus was growing into the regular use of video surveillance during this time (hundred's of thousands of dollars being invested) and we learned a good bit from this small, cheap,system. Primarily we learned that there are very real, demonstrable, benefits to having good video when trying to provide a safe environment. We also learned that we needed more and better equipment.

The coliseum is currently being renovated/rebuilt in a very major way. Capable, well specified, IP video surveillance is part of the design plan in order to provide for public safety event management and a physical security measure for the property.

So our box set was enormously better than nothing at all. But I suspect the jail purchase will also eventually lead to officials with the purse strings realizing the benefits of video along with the responsibility to do it in an effective way.

Think of the audit findings opportunities here. Wrong people touching government infrastructure. Uninsured staff on ladders. Non-low voltage techs likely touching the fire suppression system. Probably touching the public internet too. Who knows if the gear has the proper UL approvals.

"What could go wrong?"

I get it LE needs tools to do their job and we all want them doing their job, well. But painting a "Inmate lawyers, please file suit here" on your back might not be the right path...

Also who gave the sherriff the power to touch the walls of the building? Is that assumed? Are they king of the universe on those grounds? Does the fire marshall agree?

* Breaking News *

A fight at the prison was caught on their new system.

See the video here...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/video/newly-installed-cameras-show-massive-084836770.html

In addition to the $700 for the system, is the time for the labor to install. The video above shows that it took more than 1 person, a lift was required, etc.

Of course, they are running the cable without protecting them, etc. We will see what happens if an inmate pulls a length of cable down and uses it as a weapon...

I'm not surprised honestly most stuff these days is plug and play... most people don't want to pay "full price" for a company to come in and install a system, so they end up with dodgy integrators and they tend to be full of crap so the temptation gets the best of the customer and off they go :)

if the system stops or does not perform it's not and external integrators fault it's the actual institution/government... it's justified by "we only spent x dollars so we have got our x amount of value" and generally when they look at having nothing vs something.. it's not hard to choose which way to go.

At the end of the day there isn't enough money, period.

Champagne dreams, beer budget.

Cities have a bigger achilles heal, PENSIONS.

If this cuts through the red tape and saves some money for potholes, pensions, etc., they're ahead of the game.

Technology has consistently over promised and under delivered.

Every few years they can rip and replace at a fraction of the high end solution.

5G wireless will change everything...hours of video streams transmitted in seconds.

This is more about management incompetence vs. lack of institutional controls vs budgets.....

Sheriff will be kicked to the curb...someone more politically skilled will replace her and down the road they'll put a real system in...

Same issue re: surveillance(or lack there of) in most corrections facilities...