A new view

Feb 1, 2001 12:00 PM, CAREY ADAMS

Digital surveillance system provides live remote access of schools Schools are among the safest places in the country. A directive for administrators is to take steps to keep them safe.

Ten months ago administrators of the South Redford School District in Redford, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, took such a step when they installed the SecureView surveillance system inside the school district's high school. According to Bill Weber, assistant superintendent of the South Redford School District, the system has made a positive change within the school.

"We have never had any major problems, but the complaints and problems we have dealt with in the past have been cut dramatically," says Weber.

The SecureView system, manufactured by View Systems Inc., Englewood, Colo., was installed inside Thurston High School so that it connects to existing cameras installed at the school. The SecureView-4 system, which includes a monitor that displays four frames of video per second and digital hard-drive storage, is being used by the school administration to store video footage of events happening within the cameras' fields of view. Thurston High School administrators are also using the system to monitor live video footage from their desktop computers, which are networked to receive video feeds from installed cameras.

The system transmits images from surveillance cameras placed inside each of the hallways, the media center, counseling offices, and the administrative offices of the school, which houses more than 1,000 students. For South Redford school district officials, SecureView is a vast improvement over its former surveillance system.

"We had security cameras and monitors that were analog. We really didn't get clear pictures from it and we had to change the tapes every 24 hours," says Weber. "It wasn't that useful."

Changing tapes every 24 hours also became a hindrance during times when students would claim that something had been stolen from their lockers or if another student had attacked them. School officials would have to guess where the incident might have occurred on the tape by fast-forwarding or rewinding the tape. Sometimes the tape of the alleged incident was not available because it had been recorded over for use for another day.

"If a kid said something was stolen out of his or her locker, we didn't have anything to refute it or prove it," says Weber. "Now, we have something."

SecureView links up with the school's 48 cameras campus-wide and transmits the images to its digital monitor. The images are accessed through the school's central monitoring center or via school administrator's desktop computers.

According to Weber, the system is useful because it digitally stores video on a CD for at least six months.

"With this system, if a kid said something happened in the hallway at 2:35 p.m., we can go right to the monitor, plug in the time and go right to the video," says Weber.

View Systems officials say SecureView is set up so administrators can select specific times and dates, search for that time, and quickly access the video pertaining to that time. According to View Systems, having the ability to access live video footage remotely in schools might prevent a troubling situation.

"Schools are very vulnerable and if you can monitor activities such as traffic patterns within hallways and suspicious activities going on in certain areas, then maybe we can prevent tragedies such as Columbine," says Bruce Lesniek, senior vice president of business development for View Systems Inc.

South Redford School District officials hope to prevent school tragedies such as the one at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., or the tragedy that occurred at another Thurston High School, this one located in Springfield, Ore. In May 1999, a student armed with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle, .22-caliber handgun and a 9mm Glock handgun, shot two students to death and injured 11.

According to South Redford officials, no gun violence has occurred in their schools.

Weber says students in the school are learning that any activity that occurs in the hallways can be viewed and reviewed.

"We never really had any problems, but scuffles have been reduced. Claims that items have been stolen from lockers have been minimized," says Weber. "You find out that some people lie about things. You have instances in which a kid says an expensive jacket was stolen from his locker and the parents get upset. We go back and show the video of the day, and the time frame they claim it occurred, and lo and behold, it didn't happen. Momma isn't upset with us anymore."

South Redford School District officials have future plans to connect SecureView to the local police department. The system can be upgraded to link security cameras with local police forces the same way a modem hooks up a home computer to the Internet.

"That way police don't merely respond to a crisis, they can monitor the problem as it develops, prevent it from happening, or limit the scope of the problem," says Lesniek.

Police traveling near the school can also access video cameras in the school from a laptop computer within the police cruiser.

Weber says a couple of students protested the fact that the school system would have live monitoring of student activity within the hallways and guidance offices.

"They said we were violating their constitutional rights, but we were prepared to cite laws declaring that we had the authority to place cameras throughout the school," says Weber.

The system was used to help capture a man who broke into the high school and stole some equipment. After reviewing the tape, school officials were able to recognize the thief. He was a former student of the school.

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