Surveillance system deals blow to school vandals

Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM

Council Bluffs Community School District, a 21-school system comprised of grade schools, junior highs and high schools in Council Bluff, Iowa, recently installed an IP-based video security system that includes Toshiba Surveillix digital video recorders (DVRs).

“As a safety and security measure it was decided to add Toshiba security cameras to our schools,” said Dr. Jo Campbell, assistant superintendent of the Council Bluffs Community School Council. “The effort had to be financed through grants, and a plan was laid out to install cameras in the most at-risk schools first and then all of the secondary and finally the remaining elementary schools.”

Greg Smith, a sales engineer for Barone Security Systems, Omaha, Neb., helped install the pilot program of Toshiba Surveillix DVRs and IK-644A day/night cameras into three Council Bluffs schools. Following the success of that program, Barone Security extended the Toshiba system district-wide.

According to Smith, the Toshiba Surveillix system enables school district administrators and other authorized personnel to actively monitor the events of several locations simultaneously in real-time over the district's LAN infrastructure. Equipped with Toshiba's Central Station software, the Surveillix units make it easy for administrators to remotely manage, backup, search and configure images from any networked computer, whether they are in school, at home or traveling.

“The cameras have paid for themselves in the documentation of vandalism and have helped create a more secure environment for our students,” Campbell says. “The first week the cameras were in that school they fully documented the vandals. The cooperating police were thrilled to have everything captured on digital video.”

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