Miami Beach Police Department

Jun 1, 1997 12:00 PM, >By Staff

Few places are more in need of accurate, reliable and secure access control than law enforcement precincts. Consequently, when the Miami Beach Police Department began experiencing problems with its access control system, they were puzzled and then alarmed. Unauthorized personnel were gaining access to restricted areas, while those with authorization were often denied - both with increasing frequency.

After numerous troubleshooting episodes to resolve the problem failed to salvage the system, the hand of fate intervened. Lightning struck the building. According to Brad Judd, Miami Beach property manager, It took out the uninterruptable power supply and made a mess of the system. If some parts were hard to get or unavailable before, it became apparent that to try to resurrect the system to its former state would probably be a futile exercise.

Judd weighed the trade-off of repair and maintenance costs for the installed system versus buying a new system. The decision to go with a new system was a no-brainer, he says. The technology was 10 years old, and it was clear we would not be able to rescue it.

With the burden of cost justification behind, Judd bid out to several vendors a new system to replace their current, but crippled, access control system. Cost was certainly a criteria, Judd explains. But I was equally concerned with state-of-the-art technology.

The winning bid was awarded to AAA Automatic Door and Gate Inc., Miami. The new system, the contractor learned, had to solve at least one nagging problem: The original readers were erratic and lacked sufficient proximity sensitivity, says Adolfo Perez, president and owner of AAA Automatic Door and Gate Inc. People often had to physically rub the cards back and forth on the reader before it would respond.

Approximately 70 doors in the police facility were fitted with ASR-112 proximity readers from Motorola Indala, San Jose, Calif., and the Miami PD ordered 1,400 Indala AVC-132 Image100 proximity cards.

In addition to the police department, close-by Miami Beach City Hall will use the same configuration on its security-sensitive doors.

With a reading range of about 4 inches, the reader provides hands-free convenience for entry access when cards are worn externally. For the police department, city hall and court personnel, the cards will eventually replace ID badges, according to Judd. We invested in a video imaging system that prints a person's picture directly to the plastic for this purpose, says Judd. The system, obtained through Southern Lock and Supply, Miami, is Millenium Badge for Windows from Marlok, a division of Ilco Unican, Winston-Salem, N.C., used in conjunction with Persona printers from Fargo Electronics Inc., Eden Prairie, Minn.

Ultimately, the cards and readers will make their way to the Miami Beach court houses, where they will also be used as time stamps for police officers putting in overtime.

Controlling the system A Marlok control system is married to the Indala readers. The system is similar to the one used in the Washington FBI building, says James Rochester, president of Delta Security Products Company Inc., manufacturers' representative in Savannah, Ga., and supplier of the system's components. It provides flexibility, tied to a friendly user interface and addresses some of the technical support difficulties Miami Beach has experienced.

Additionally, the Indala-Marlok system provides intelligent access control that is programmable, keyed to each card's unique identity. The system not only restricts personnel to their designated areas, but also tracks where they have been, the entry and exit time-span, and precise time and date. Cards can be issued to allow employees access during a given part of the day for a given part of the week, and they can be programmed for holidays, special events and similar occasions.

Single-door control is also important, as it prevents a group of doors from malfunctioning when the controller receives an error message. The system is backed up by battery power, enabling it to function normally with outages of up to eight hours, although the police department has an emergency power generator.

How has the system performed? So far we have been very pleased. It's a pleasure to access places without standing around waiting to get in, says Judd. It's a far cry from the old system.

How proximity works Indala proximity readers transmit a low radio frequency signal to credit card-sized proximity cards.

With an antenna and microchip sandwiched in plastic, the card picks up the signal and the chip converts it to power for signaling back to the reader a unique, preprogrammed identity. The reader then forwards this to the access control system for authorization. If the identity checks out, access is granted. Readings typically take less then a tenth of a second.

Since personnel never have to touch the readers, card durability is very high. The cards operate in any position and are unaffected by soiling, scratching, chemicals or magnetic fields.

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