Visimetrics has delivered an integrated solution based on its DVR for 23 police custody suites for England’s second largest police force - West Midland Police (WMP).
Visimetrics has delivered an integrated solution based on its DVR for 23 police custody suites for England's second largest police force - West Midland Police (WMP).
The new solution encompasses more than 1,000 cameras and 116 encoders working in association with RAID Array mass storage systems. The entire solution contains a massive 1,400 TB of RAID6 protected storage. Visimetrics network-based health monitoring system continually checks encoders and storage systems for status providing Visimetrics, WMP and the systems integrator with real-time updates.
“Custody surveillance images often form part of murder investigations. As the footage can be used by expert witnesses in facial mapping it is essential that the recorded images are of the highest quality,” said Colin Holder, CCTV PM at West Midlands Police Force
“Image quality was by far the most decisive consideration we had, closely followed by audio quality, lip synchronization and user management of the recordings. Visimetrics held a clear advantage over other systems evaluated in delivering these key requirements.”
The force was also keen to streamline the processing of evidence as a result of the project. “Another key benefit Visimetrics offered is the ability to download footage in a very straight forward manner onto DVD,” Holder said. “Given that the Criminal Justice System uses DVD as its standard method; this ability has massively streamlined the process of getting useable evidence directly to our ‘customers'.”
With a budget allocation of more than US$4 million assigned the force started the installation work early in 2009. The aim was to complete two custody suites per month. For operational reasons custody suites geographically separated were chosen for installation at the same time. The project pretty much managed to adhere to this plan, despite changes caused by the force undergoing a major restructuring at the same time.
WMP's police stations are very different in terms of architecture. Some stations are located in old Victorian buildings, others in modern buildings. A pattern was established with the aim to minimize blind spots within each block and the number of cameras is directly related to the size of the block and, also, whether the site has an exercise yard and/or a van dock. The surveillance coverage is therefore exceptionally high compared to most installations.