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Features

CCTV Crime Stoppers

Foiling the bad guys with the help of a new player on the good-guy team - closed-circuit television

By LARRY ANDERSON

Police officers in Tacoma, Wash.'s Hilltop area can watch for illegal drug transactions at eight different locations while eating lunch back at the police substation.

The technology of closed-circuit television (CCTV) gives Tacoma's officers an up-close-and-personal view of eight city intersections that used to be among the city's busiest areas for selling drugs. In the eight years since the CCTV cameras were first in\stalled, video surveillance has dramatically improved law enforcement in the Hilltop area in the central downtown of the blue-collar town (population: 185,000), located 30 miles south of Seattle.

Responding to a proposal from area residents looking to rid their neighborhood of drug dealers, police placed the first camera on a light pole at the corner of 23rd and M Streets. Success was immediate and dramatic, and other cameras were soon added at troubled intersections throughout the Hilltop area. Even years later, the statistics of mostly drug-related crime in the area (comparing 1998 to the previous year) continue to paint a striking picture of the success of CCTV in public places:

homicides are down 42 percent;
rapes are down 26 percent;
robberies are down 7 percent; and
aggravated assaults are down 15.5 percent.

"Statistically, Hilltop is the safest place in the city of Tacoma," says Lieutenant Jim Howatson, Sector One Commander of the Tacoma Police Department.

CCTV crime-fighting nationwide

The success of CCTV crime-fighting efforts in Tacoma has been replicated at hundreds of locations throughout the United States. Cities and counties are increasingly using the technology of closed-circuit television to give troubled downtown business districts vibrant new life, to rid public housing projects of the destructive criminal element, to restore public parks to public use, even to monitor traffic congestion and catch red-light violators.

But conceding the remarkable success thus far, the use of CCTV in public places is in its infancy. Law enforcement and city and county governments have barely scratched the surface of what CCTV can do to make America's cities and counties safer places to live, experts agree.

There are considerable obstacles to widespread public use of CCTV, including privacy issues, economic issues and questions of logistics. Not the smallest obstacle is getting the word out to cities and counties about the benefits of CCTV technology, and presenting a workable plan for how it can be applied.

The market for CCTV in public sector applications has currently realized only about 10 percent of its potential, estimates Michael Shanahan, co-chairman of the private liaison committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). "The market opportunity is vast," adds Shanahan, a retired University of Washington police chief. "We're in the infancy of the use of this technology on a broad basis."

Public applications emerging

CCTV has been widely used for private security and surveillance applications for 20 years or more, but applications in public areas and involving law enforcement personnel are newer. Success of the technology in places such as Baltimore's downtown commercial district has demonstrated to other cities and counties the technology's effectiveness.

After installing 16 cameras in a pilot program in the downtown Lexington Market area in 1996, Baltimore has since undertaken to expand the system. In 1997 compared to 1996, Baltimore enjoyed a 33 percent decrease in crime; in the first four months of 1998, crime was down 36 percent over the same months of 1997. Inside the range of security cameras alone, crime decreased 39 percent during the first part of 1998 compared to the same period the year before. The crime statistics include murder, rape, burglary, arson, aggravated assault and larceny.

"Some departments haven't yet embarked on a CCTV initiative," says Shanahan. "They are in a position to benefit from what others have learned."

Meeting of the minds

A meeting this month in Washington, D.C. - the 1999 CCTV for Public Safety and Community Policing Summit - will seek to deal constructively with thorny issues surrounding the use of public CCTV surveillance, with a goal of paving the way for more cities to reap the benefits of CCTV crime-fighting.

Hosting the two-day summit will be the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Security Industry Association (SIA). Summit attendees will debate and vote on proposed operational guidelines relating to responsible use of CCTV in public safety and community policing applications.

After the guidelines are finalized, they will be distributed to the members of the IACP. "We want to develop effective guidelines before state and federal regulation is passed that could restrict CCTV use," says Steve Harris, police chief of Redmond, Wash., and chairman of the CCTV subcommittee of IACP's private sector liaison committee.

Harris says the police chief's association sees CCTV not as a panacea, but as one of the "tools in our tool chest." Often, mayors, city councils and county governments look to police chiefs for information on CCTV and how it can be used successfully to fight crime, he adds.

"The city council needs to be educated, and that will largely come from police chiefs," says Harris, who expects to be using CCTV in his city within the next two years.

"The chief's role is to be reasonably knowledgeable about the technology and its potential, including image quality, lower light level capabilities and digital technology," says Shanahan. The chief also must be well versed in the human/community side of CCTV implementation - proper training and how the systems are operated. Emphasis should be on "human engineering" because equipment is the least expensive component. The CCTV Summit will address such operational issues.

Involving the community

Critical to the success of CCTV is involvement of the community in the decision-making process, says Harris. "We have to make sure they want us to use this tool to protect them," he says. "Most of our activity is done with community support. Whatever area we are working in, we look for community support."

"Community policing" is a familiar phrase among law enforcement personnel these days, and it is descriptive of the ever-closer interaction of police officers and the people they are charged with protecting. For example, in Redmond Chief Harris works with a 15-member advisory committee that includes students, housewives and businesspeople, among others. He says his officers do their jobs in a "partnership with the community."

The goals of community policing dovetail perfectly into an effective approach to installation of a CCTV system. In the case of Tacoma, the equipment was paid for by a citizens group and private business. If citizens are involved in the process, Big Brother objections are much less likely to surface, contends Howatson of Tacoma's Sector One. "It was driven by the community," he adds. "They just push, push, push."

The benefits of community involvement have long been emphasized by the police chief's association. Says Shanahan: "We realized that implementation of CCTV technology would be an initiative the public could play a role in. Police can't operate in isolation. You have to have involvement of the citizenry. The success of this approach can be seen clearly in neighborhood watch and other crime prevention efforts."

Needed: Clear, sensible policy guidelines

The proposed CCTV guidelines - to be finalized at the summit this month - evolved from similar guidelines that have been used effectively in the United Kingdom by the Metropolitan Police Force. Implementation here is harder because U.S. police departments are more decentralized than, say, those in Germany or France. Shanahan says the United States is more decentralized than any other country in the world.

Among the goals of the summit is an open exchange of ideas. "Looking at our proposed guidelines, we want to know: What did we miss? Is it structured enough?" says Harris. Attendees will include tort attorneys, manufacturers, police departments and representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The finished guidelines will provide state and federal legislators a foundation before, for example, they start writing restrictive laws in reaction to media hysteria or uninformed public opposition. A police chief wants to be able to convince the lawmakers to "use me and the document as a resource" to help in composing fair laws to govern CCTV use, says Harris.

The two-day CCTV summit will include speakers representing law enforcement, civil libertarian/legal, professional security, regulatory/legislative and CCTV manufacturing points of view. They will frame the debate over the draft operational protocols and set the tone for summit workshop groups.

Legal opinions from an expert

One of the CCTV summit speakers will be James Falk Sr., a constitutional lawyer and chairman of the U.S. Department of Justice subcommittee on CCTV use. "Cameras in public places are legal," says Falk. "There is no expectation of privacy in public places. It's legal and its use is going to grow." In cases when city and county governments have backed away from install-ing CCTV cameras, says Falk, the reason has mostly been "political heat, not because it wasn't the right thing to do."

Is there a point when CCTV use can creep over the edge of legality? "There are a lot of edges," answers Falk. For example, big questions surround the storage and maintenance of information, including whether tapes are reused and how soon they are erased. The proposed CCTV guidelines address these issues.

Also an issue: Does installing a CCTV system imply to citizens that a camera should be operating at a particular time and hour when a crime occurs? Says Shanahan: "There is no guarantee the monitors are being watched all the time. People have to realize that cameras do not replace police officers in the community."

Police chiefs should not say to their public that a police officer is behind every camera. "How do you communicate that to the public?" says Shanahan. "It's part of writing up an implementation plan."

Another issue: "The people who are maintaining the security system (may not be) the police," says Falk, which brings up sticky questions about the handling of evidence. Was the chain of custody of the evidence maintained? Could the tape have been tampered, edited, played with or taken home by anyone along the evidence chain? Involvement of non-police personnel in maintaining and operating the CCTV system could compromise the usefulness of the evidence in court.

And the issue of privacy will be front and center at the CCTV summit. Users should be careful, for example, not to point the camera to a window across the street or to peer into other private places, whether the inside of a car, house trailer, camper or other mobile unit parked along the road. "It will take time to sort all these things out," says Falk. "You don't want to use a device that will be revealing in a way that will offend someone's sensibility."

The moving equipment target

"There is good equipment out there, but it is changing quickly," says Chief Harris. Incorporating technology into the guidelines for how CCTV should be implemented is "trying to hit a moving target," he says. Michael Shanahan agrees: "Technology is advancing, and we have been behind in putting out uniform guidelines about issues of legality and community involvement. The technical and political have to come together."

What is the industry's role in promoting the use of CCTV in cities and counties? Says Shanahan: "They're doing it by holding the summit. After that, we have to take the show on the road to meetings of sheriffs and police chiefs associations at the state level. You're looking at a two- to three-year initiative."

The System in Tacoma

"The drug dealers don't live here; they come here to do business."

In response, Tacoma, Wash., residents of the Hilltop area proposed putting cameras up to fight drug dealers in their neighborhoods. Gradually, eight Burle/Philips cameras were placed, each paid for by neighbors, private businesses, with grant money, or provided by a camera company. "Success has been significant, although it's not the absolute solution," says Lieutenant Jim Howatson, Sector One Commander of the Tacoma Police Department.

In Tacoma, camera images are not recorded, they are monitored informally on Burle/Philips monitors at a substation 10 blocks away. A common crime charged against persons caught on the cameras is "loitering with intent to engage in narcotics activity." Sitting in the substation, police officers can make note of an object being exchanged, and money changing hands. The clarity of the cameras allows officers to see "rock cocaine in a person's hand and money," says Howatson. If they know the person, they can contact him, or they can radio a nearby patrol car of an incident taking place.

"It's remarkable how many arrests we have made, and (the drug dealers) know the cameras are there," says Howatson. Two monitors in the substation each have a screen split into four views by a Burle/Philips multiplexer. Monitoring is informal, but "there's enough enforcement that they know it is being monitored." The cameras are connected through International Fiber Systems (IFS) fiber-optic lines to the monitors back at the police substation (located at 13th St. and Martin Luther King Way). The dealer/installer was Intellisys (formerly Proline), Bellevue, Wash.

The police presence is "community-oriented," says Howatson. "We are really entwined. If somebody has a concern, we hear about it." There are 25 to 30 meetings a month with neighborhood and business associations. The police have received "no complaints about the cameras," says Howatson.

There is no set schedule to the monitoring. There might be a period when the cameras are not monitored, and then officers might "flip them on as the day goes on," says Howatson. Even with the casual approach, the department "makes 10 good felony arrests a week" with the help of the cameras, he says.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Larry Anderson is the editor/ associate publisher of Access Control & Security Systems Integration.

By ROXANNA GUILFORD

Residents of a Tukwila, Wash., neighborhood give new meaning to "community watch." Local volunteers, with assistance from the Tukwila Police Department Neighborhood Resource Center, monitor activities in a 10-block area off Highway 99 (Pacific Highway South) using closed-circuit television (CCTV).

The CCTV system, which consists of five cameras and two monitors, is part of a community-based program that, according to officer Bob Abbott, the center's director, has reduced crime by 80 percent in five years.

While acknowledging that a police presence in the area contributed to the reduction, Abbott also credits the community for its own transformation. He credits the success of the program to the fact that it arose organically from the community.

Rough neighborhood

Five years ago, the 10-block area had just been annexed into Tukwila and was rife with crime, according to Abbott. The area seemed to attract trouble: He estimates that about 70 percent of the victims and 80 percent of those arrested did not even live in the area.

"This was the toughest neighborhood on the Pacific coast," he recalls.

Initial police crackdowns achieved little success: "Arresting the bad guys didn't fix it."

So the police turned to the community. At first, it was difficult. Residents were often afraid to leave their homes. But together, they brainstormed.

"The cameras were the citizens' idea," Abbott emphasizes. "[We're] not interested in being Big Brother. But if the citizens want to watch over their community, we will provide a place to do that."

And the police did, setting up the Tukwila Police Department Neighborhood Resource Center. The center, run mostly by volunteers, addresses a plethora of community needs.

Abbott is quick to point out that the cameras alone are not responsible for the 80 percent drop in crime.

"We have other programs. We pass out food to the hungry, we find shelter for the homeless, we get medical care for the unwed mother. We're a great referral outfit, and that is really our primary job," he says.

However, the cameras help generate community interest and involvement.

"A lot of my volunteers started here because of those cameras," he explains. "The first month or two, they are working those cameras over pretty heavy. After that, it starts tapering off and they start working on things that are more community-based. How do you measure the value of that?"

Setting up the system was also a community effort - a technological pastiche. The system cost the police department about $25,000, with funds coming from drug-seizure money. The system would have cost considerably more if not for community assistance. For instance, the local cable TV company provided the fiber-optic line. The city's signal-light crew mounted the cameras on existing utility poles. And two local companies helped pay for the fifth camera after they decided they wanted one near their businesses.

Neighborhood watch

For the most part, civilians - neighborhood residents - watch the monitors. Abbott is the only full-time officer assigned to the center.

If they see a crime, they call 911. The 911 dispatchers are aware of the program, and participants are trained to report a crime efficiently and effectively.

Abbott tells of one instance when a volunteer was mugged on the way to the center - on camera. The volunteer on duty reported the attack, the culprit was arrested and the property recovered.

The mugger was convicted based on the tapes. That's not often the case. It's not because the tapes don't hold up in court (they are admissible), but because once culprits see the tape, they plead guilty before the case reaches court.

Since the residents themselves requested the CCTV system, and since the surveillance is no secret (signs alerting passers-by to the cameras are posted prominently at main roads to the area), Abbott hasn't heard any complaints about Big Brother.

"None. Zero. Nobody has complained," he says. It is a bit amazing, considering that the cameras received extensive local - and even national - media coverage.

Abbott stresses to volunteers that the cameras are not to be used to spy. They are trained how to use the equipment and thoroughly briefed on rules regulating privacy.

"We have a written policy that you aren't to violate anyone's private space," he notes. Moreover, camera placement makes such abuses unlikely; they are not near any residential buildings.

Pleased as he is with the success and popularity of the CCTV effort, he has some hard-earned advice for other cities considering such a program.

- Spend what you need. "We put too big an eye toward saving a buck."

- Create accountability for repair and maintenance. "Because we pieced it together with donations from here and a little help from there, we ended up with nobody responsible for maintaining the whole system."

- Have a plan. "It's not just enough to match money and equipment. You need to know where you are going," he advises. "Otherwise, you will make some expensive mistakes."

- Focus on flexibility. "We overprotected the system," he says. He now would opt for something less cumbersome.

Tukwila's CCTV equipment

- Five Burle pan/tilt/zoom cameras mounted on utility poles.

Camera: Burle TC391

Lens: Burle TC 1840 10x

Pan/tilt: Burle TC 9418

Housing: Burle LTC 9358/60

Receiver/drivers: Burle LTC 8561/60

- Two monitors located in the Tukwila Police Department Neighborhood Resource Center able to print to a Mitsubishi photo printer P61U.

- Two Burle-Phillips time-lapse VCRs (LTC 3924/60)

Videos are maintained for one week and then the tapes are reused.

- Fiber-optic transmitter/receiver: International Fiber Systems Inc.

Transmitter: VT 4525; Receiver: VR 4520.

- Process: Cameras transmit analog information to a box built by International Fiber Systems. The box translates the analog into digital light pulses. The pulses are carried along the fiber line to another box, where they are retranslated into analog.

- Single-mode fiber optics. One fiber for video, one fiber for data.

- Vendor: Intellisys (formerly Proline).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roxanna Guilford is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.

CCTV technology and market trends

By DAVE SMITH

If the 1970s marked the birth of closed-circuit television in commercial use, it all began mostly as a technology "toy." In the early years, users stumbled through applications, meeting with limited success. There were many "white elephant" systems, and acceptance was slow in coming.

In the early 1980s, the emergence of the time-lapse video cassette recorder into widespread use changed the patterns of CCTV use and expanded the spectrum of applications. The most dramatic example was the proliferation of CCTV in convenience stores.

During the 1980s and into the 1990s, CCTV was used increasingly for data capture and archiving. Primarily, recordings were used as evidence for prosecution or as protection from liability claims. Proportionately few systems were designed with an expectation of real-time response to crime events.

The threat of terrorism in overseas markets has recently led users to view CCTV as a useful tool for real-time response. Product demand and development have shifted to sophisticated motion detection and tracking systems. An increasing frequency of workplace violence and the more recent threat of domestic terrorism have boosted usage of CCTV as a live tool for security guards with a greater expectation of protection.

Surveys show businesses are planning to increase spending for CCTV systems sharply. Popularity of matrix switching systems points to higher usage by live operators. Government sector business also has increased dramatically. Coverage of public buildings and city center surveillance systems are becoming commonplace throughout the world as concerns for public safety win out over privacy issues.

PC and Internet evolution

Much has been said from a technology standpoint about the coming digital video revolution. Fundamental changes are being fueled by the development of the personal computer and increasing use of the Internet. Memory and storage prices are dropping, and sophisticated chipsets for video processing and compression are becoming prevalent.

ISDN and cable modems are currently providing high-speed, low-cost digital data links throughout the country. A new technology - ADSL - will increase the bandwidth available at lower costs, driven by ever-increasing Internet usage. ADSL will allow users as much as 8 megabits per second of download speed and up to 640 kilobits per second in the upload direction over ordinary telephone wires.

Phone-line video transmission

In the CCTV industry, we have been seeing dramatic increases of products and services using remote phone-line video transmission. Likewise, interest is increasing in digital video recorders, although storage and archiving problems have not yet been solved to the point that digital video recorders are ready to displace conventional VHS recorders.

There is also a lot of talk - and some confusion - about video transmission over data networks. Security users like the idea of using an existing local area network (LAN) to carry CCTV pictures to any PC user in their facility. When they investigate the available technology, however, their interest turns to disappointment. The primary problem is the required data bandwidth.

Digital networked video

New companies are entering the CCTV market daily from the computer graphics and network industries. The companies are touting features and capabilities of transmitting CCTV over conventional LANs. However, networked video requires compromises in picture quality and availability that make their use unfeasible in many security applications. The computer types are unfamiliar with the needs of most security users. On the other hand, security consumers may not understand that they are being asked to compromise the features they would expect from a conventional system.

Some applications can accept compromises of picture quality or frame rate. Still, a single camera will use approximately 12 Mb of bandwidth on a network. Ask your IT manager to allow you to connect and consume 12Mb of the available bandwidth on the data network, and be prepared for an emotional response! Most network managers are under pressure to improve performance, and adding even one such device would have a significant negative impact on the goal. Most manufacturers of networked video systems admit you can't use their systems for continuous surveillance (or recording) over any LAN used for business computers.

The accompanying table shows that the only realistic way to use video over networks is to consider ways to reduce bandwidth by lowering resolution, increasing compression and slowing down frame rates. The compromises require a significant shift in the way a system is designed and used. The display limitations necessitate an increased reliance on automated detection. A guard could view only one or two high-resolution, real-time pictures at a time, and video recording might need to be done either at the camera or centralized over a separate analog or digital signal path. For most users, viewing would have to be event-driven; that is, limited to clips of a relatively small number of frames. This approach could be acceptable for applications in which the video is captured and stored as clips, such as transaction data.

Digital networked video may never completely replace coax inside a building, but it could, in some cases, provide a convenient way to distribute limited amounts of video to PCs. In other words, the cameras would still connect to the matrix switch as they do now - with coax - and digital video would be used to distribute selected cameras to non-power users (such as managers) who do not need video monitors on their desks. They would most likely be limited to low-resolution, slow-update pictures within a window on their PC monitors. The power users - security personnel - who need to see and control a number of cameras at one time would continue to have coax deliver conventional video to their locations.

New applications to emerge

The bigger impact of digital networked video will be in creating new applications for CCTV that are impractical at present. The first and most obvious application will be to expand the geographical coverage area of CCTV systems in ways that cannot be addressed with today's phone-line transmission products. In a wide-area-networked system, cameras that are scattered around the country or the world could be used and controlled in much the same way as local cameras. Remote recording systems using digital techniques could be used to gather video data, and when activity of interest is detected, video clips could be delivered efficiently over the network to remote centers where investigations could be conducted. There would be little or no need for on-site operators.

Coax not soon to be replaced

The CCTV industry is on the verge of a major paradigm shift. As we enter the era of digital video, there will be new hardware and software offerings, and plenty of market confusion and misinformation. Even with the technical limitations, however, the long-range prospects for networked video look good, especially in wide-area applications.

While digital video will eventually make fundamental changes to CCTV, it will require attitude changes about what video looks like and how it is used. And as network technology improves and costs go down, we will see increased usage of this approach.

Over the next five years we should see many new applications for CCTV emerge out of this new technology, but don't look to pull out the coax-based systems anytime soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Smith is vice president of marketing for Pelco, Clovis, Calif., a CCTV supplier.

By ROXANNA GUILFORD

Trying to beat the traffic light can be costly in Alexandria, Va. Police there use a camera-and-sensor system to monitor selected intersections; violators are fined $50. The system, which has dramatically reduced accidents, is based on the same system that determines when traffic signals change, explains Mark Canoyer, technical services division chief for the Alexandria Police Department.

The GATSO monitoring system, invented in Holland, is frequently used in Great Britain. A set of loops in the roadway is wired to the traffic signal. If a car hits the first loop 0.4 seconds after the light turns red, it activates the system. When the car hits the second loop, the device records the speed and takes the first picture (with the car in the intersection). It snaps the second picture after the car has traveled about 21 feet.

"It's a very bright flash. Most people we have talked to know they have been caught," says officer Bob Pettey of the traffic enforcement unit.

The photo includes a picture of the tag and the red light, as well as a listing of time, date, location and traffic-light number. The second picture also indicates how long the light had been yellow, how long it had been red and how fast the vehicle was moving. Since both are rear shots, occupants are not visible.

The Alexandria police rotate one unit among three intersections. Lockheed Martin IMS works closely with them, creating the software and providing the camera equipment.

Once the pictures are snapped, Lockheed (or a subcontractor) removes, develops, enlarges and reviews the film. They cannot identify the culprits, though; only the police can access the Department of Motor Vehicles database to obtain car-ownership data, explains Canoyer. But the software makes it easy.

The software allows police to look up violator license plates without adding manpower. "We just shuffle a disk from one computer to another," says Pettey.

By the time the process is finished, many pictures are discarded. Records for vehicles photographed from Nov. 12, 1997, to Dec. 31, 1998, indicate that about 46 percent were rejected. The most common reasons? The tag is illegible, the picture does not record a violation, or DMV data is not available.

Finally, Lockheed sends out citations (which the police review). After two notices, Lockheed generates a summons and processes the forms for court.

Positive response

Community feedback has been positive, Canoyer says, noting that most concerns were addressed in the state or local legislative process. Politicos, not the police department, took the heat. Most complaints come from folks who do not want cameras in their neighborhoods or drivers who receive their first-ever ticket. Cries of "I wasn't driving" are easily addressed - the car owner needs only file an affidavit to that effect, and the citation is dropped.

A trend?

The Virginia General Assembly approved red-light monitoring programs for certain jurisdictions in 1995; Alexandria began in August 1997. Cities from Portland, Ore., to Charlotte, N.C., have used similar systems.

Before implementing such a system, jurisdictions should ensure it will be cost-effective, Canoyer says. In Alexandria, contract costs for August 1997 through July 1998 totaled $315,000; this year's cost: $275,000. So far, it has generated more than $750,000 in fines.

The camera also has made the three intersections safer. Pettey didn't have exact figures, but he reports that accidents have been significantly reduced.

"We were very fortunate - or smart - in the selection of intersections," Canoyer explains. They selected heavy-volume intersections that had high rates of accidents and violations, as well as a number of citizen complaints about safety. The mix is important, since high volume and high accident rates do not necessarily correlate to high violation rates.

The department would like to build on this success and consider photo speed enforcement - if the legislature approves. But don't expect Alexandria to use CCTV to monitor high-crime areas.

"I don't think anybody is talking about cameras on street corners," Canoyer says.

The system at work

From Nov. 12, 1997, to Dec. 31, 1998, 38,851 photos were taken.

Of those:

- 8,840 were rejected by vendor.
- 5,650 lacked DMV data (most from out of state).
- 3,506 were rejected by the police (or have police reviews pending).
- 20,855 citations were delivered (Of these, 15,043 have been settled).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roxanna Guilford is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.

A sampling of proposed guidelines

Here are some of the recommendations in the proposed CCTV guidelines, to be discussed at the CCTV summit April 8-9 in Washington, D.C.:

- information obtained through video monitoring will be used exclusively for security and law enforcement purposes. Recorded analog videotape and collected digital images should be stored for no more than 30 days. Equipment should be configured to prevent tapes from being duplicated or tampered with.

- law enforcement agencies will periodically disseminate written materials describing the purpose and location of CCTV monitoring and guidelines for its use; signs will be posted.

- the local law enforcement agency chief should have the responsibility, with the consent of the local governing body and community, to implement all video monitoring for safety and security purposes.

- a CCTV monitoring committee should be established to assure the law enforcement agency adheres to established guidelines and procedures.

- views of residential housing will be limited to no greater than are available with unaided vision; the standard of "reasonable expectation of privacy" will not be violated.

- control operators are prohibited from seeking and continuously viewing people becoming intimate in public places.

- the law enforcement community, elected governing authority, business district and citizens should be included in the formulation and execution of the video-monitoring program.

About frames per second and video compression

The accompanying table shows the number of video frames per second that can be carried by a 100 BaseT network with varying levels of video compression. The first column shows the rates for a 4 CIF (common interface format) picture, roughly the equivalent to what you would see on an analog monitor in both size and resolution. It would be hard to tell the difference between the 10:1 compressed 4 CIF picture from today's analog picture. The table shows that a 100 BaseT network could carry 247 of these pictures per second. You could have roughly eight cameras working at 30 frames per second (standard video frame rate), or 16 cameras at half that rate. This assumes that there is no other traffic on the network.

The CIF and QCIF formats are smaller, lower resolution formats that would appear as windows on the PC monitor. As can be seen from the table, the frame rate can be increased with higher levels of digital compression, but at the cost of digital artifacts in the picture that reduce resolution. There are a wide variety of compression methods available, but their performance varies only about 5 percent. The real differences perceived from one system to another are based on the designer's choice of picture format, frame rate and compression level, not the type of compression algorithm.

TABLE

Video frame rates (frames/sec) over a 100 BaseT network

An INTERTEC^® / PRIMEDIA Publication.
© 1999 All Rights Reserved.