Force Multiplier

Iron Sky surveillance solution helps Hawthorne police fight park’s crime element

CHALLENGE

The city of Hawthorne needed a better way to decrease crime at its public parks.At a size of only six acres, Eucalyptus Park offered the community several amenities including a walking path, picnic shelters, restrooms,a Tot Lot, basketball courts and a skate park. Despite the responsiveness of the police department and the vigilant efforts of the public works department,Eucalyptus Park led the city in calls for police service and was a hub for narcotics activity, truancy and vandalism.To combat crime in the park, an officer was stationed in the park from 10am-9pm every day which pulled valuable officers from patrolling the streets.“It was a drain on our resources,”said Lt. Jim Royer of the Hawthorne police department.The police and public worksdepartments evaluated all means ofdeterring crime and wanted a solutionthat would allow them to be proactivein how they managed their limitedresources.They decided they neededa video surveillance solution within thepark that would allow authorized users toview and control the cameras remotelyfrom any location in the city. Ideally, thevideo surveillance system would increasethe safety and security of the park whilereducing the number of officer man-hours.

SOLUTION

Iron Sky was chosen by the city to design and deploy a video surveillance solution for Eucalyptus Park with an emphasis on ease of use and remote viewing. The city wanted to be able to train users to operate the system in less than five minutes and allow access to the cameras from any location in the city,including from inside the patrol cars.Iron Sky designed a solution that included Axis 233D Pan/Tilt/Zoom IP cameras to allow officers to monitor all areas of the park, and Axis 216MFD Megapixel IP cameras that provided constant monitoring of key areas.To provide connectivity, Iron Sky utilized wireless mesh radios within the park and point-to-point radios to transmit the camera images one mile to a communications tower on top of the South Bay Region Public Communications Authority (SBRPCA) building, which was adjacent to the Hawthorne police department building. The camera images are recorded using H.264 compression and archived for one year onto a 30 terabyte server and storage solution located at the police department.Iron Sky installed its own video management software which was developed exclusively for law enforcement entities. Iron Sky’s VMS is a thin-client, non-proprietary application that focuses on ease of use and intuitive navigation by using an interface developed around Google Maps. All aspects of the VMS camera navigation,camera control, live view, recording and search are accessed from a single web page. Rather than present users with an overwhelming number of tabs, navigation trees, shortcut keys and web pages, users simply select the desired camera from its position on Google Maps and utilize all functionality without ever having to navigate away from the page.Iron Sky believes that the most important function of a VMS is to deliver images to critical personnel when and where they are needed in response to an incident. The Iron Sky VMS is a thin-client application that enables the city to grant access to the cameras to a new user,regardless of what department or agency they are with, simply by giving them an IP address, user name and password.The key to success on the wireless portion of this project was the fact that there was no “hop” loss on the self healing mesh units deployed by Iron Sky. Even with the high resolution of the megapixel cameras, Iron Sky was able to deploy wireless equipment that could handle the large video files being transmitted flawlessly – even when passing through multiple wireless radios.Each of the wireless radios are capable of 56 Mbps and utilize three different frequency ranges. (2.4GHz, 4.9GHz and 5.8GHz) for flexibility in design and maximum uninterrupted bandwidth.To keep the total cost of ownership of the project to a minimum, the city wanted to perform the physical installation of the cameras and wireless equipment using internal resources.This required diligent coordination by Iron Sky’s project management staff as well as the police department, public works department, South Bay Region Public Communications Authority and SBRPCA subcontractors.Iron Sky has a robust Delivery Methodology that allowed it to manage the entire process in a very short amount of time and eliminated all issues that usually arise when multiple parties are involved in a single installation. Iron Sky began the project with a pre-construction kickoff meeting with all relevant parties to identify points of contact, assign department-specific responsibilities, agree to delivery dates and ensure everyone understood the scope of work. Iron Sky’s project management staff gathered information from the client necessary for the staging and configuration of the equipment and provided equipment training and installation manuals to the relevant installation crews for the public works and SBRPCA subcontractors prior to the equipment being delivered. The high level of coordination was necessary to ensure everyone had the tools to complete their specific tasks on schedule and on-budget.

RESULTS

The cameras have given the police department an incredibly effective tool to fight crime.“Crime is basically nonexistent there,” said Lt. Jim Royer. “Most remarkable thing I’ve seen in 27 years in law enforcement.”Calls for service in Eucalyptus Park decreased dramatically immediately following the installation of the cameras.No officers have been assigned to the park at all, resulting in 11 man-hours per day of officer time put back on the streets.The types of criminal activity occurring in the park have also changed dramatically. Instead of calls for narcotics and alcohol activities, most of the incidents now involve nuisance and loitering and violating park rules such as skateboarding on the basketball court instead of in the skate park.If police receive a call about a problem at the park, officers can use the cameras to take a look before sending a car. And officers have made several arrests as a result of the cameras. When public works found a park bench had been vandalized, the camera recordings showed the individuals involved. Police were able to use the camera images to identify the suspects after they returned to the park the next day.“The wireless mesh was a much more cost-effective solution for transmitting the camera images than installing fiber optic cabling and eliminates the monthly fees associated with leasing T1 lines, said Lt. Royer. “And the remote accessibility of the Iron Sky solution truly is a force multiplier. Iron Sky has given us a unique tool that delivers results to help us stay at the fore front of modern law enforcement.

“Crime is basically non-existence there. Most remarkable thing I’ve seen in 27 years of law enforcement”— Hawthorne police Lt. Jim RoyerSample footage from an Iron Sky camera

Download: City of Hawthorne Case Study