ProacTive Upgrades

Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM

There are more than 1,000 independent school districts (ISDs) in Texas. Security officers do not have arrest powers in Texas, and city law enforcement agencies are understaffed and overloaded. So it was no surprise when, in 1984, the state allowed school districts to commission their own police departments to handle fights, irate parents and other disruptions.

Since then, 160 Texas ISDs have established their own police departments, each of which maintains the same authority as a municipal police department.

The Spring Independent School District is one of them. It lies 17 miles north of downtown Houston and covers 57 square miles in an unincorporated area of Harris County. It encompasses 26 school campuses, a transportation facility, football stadium and maintenance facility and administration building complex comprising three buildings. The Spring ISD Police Department has 29 licensed police officers and nine part-time officers under the direction of Spring ISD Police Chief Alan Bragg.

“I came here in 1991 to put the police department together,” Bragg says. “We started with eight officers and 17,000 students. Today we have 38 officers and almost 29,000 students.”

The police department prides itself on combining state-of-the-art technology with “people power” to enhance security. “Spending the money up front on security upgrades was a proactive move,” Bragg says. “We needed to make sure that we were covered, both inside and out, should someone become angry at anyone at the department. I know from experience how quickly things can go awry during processing and the liability issues that are involved.”

The department has had cameras installed in some of its schools since 1996. Since the district was in the process of renovating a building for the new police department in mid-2002, Bragg took the opportunity to research improved security solutions. “Some of the existing hardware was proprietary, and it had been too pricey for upgrades,” Bragg says. “We were at a crossroads for considering a new security solution.”

Bragg sold the district administration and the architects on the idea of using a state-of-the-art security system, with CCTV coverage in and around the facilities. The result was the purchase of fifteen, 16-camera Dedicated Micros Digital Sprite 2 units with 320GB internal drives. “In our building alone, we use four of the Digital Sprite 2 units to record 40 fixed Samsung color cameras in and around our 8,100-square-foot facility,” he says.

Officers view activity over three 21-inch Samsung monitors in the Communications Center, which remain in a 16-camera view. Cameras are plugged into ports in the sequence that one would normally enter the property.

One DVR monitors each of the 10 holding rooms — five for juveniles, the other five for adults. The adult holding rooms come in handy when a parent is called in to collect a student, and officers discover an outstanding warrant for the parent. A camera is secured behind a corner plate with a small glass window, so it is hidden on the other side of the holding room wall.

Another DVR monitors the rest of the interior cameras, while a third unit is dedicated to the exterior cameras at the police department.

Outside the building, cameras cover, and in some cases overlap, the perimeter. As a car approaches the facility, it is captured on camera.

The gate access control is handled by Sonitrol, which also provides the burglar alarm system. When the alarm sets off microphones in the schools, the officer can immediately connect into the school and view the event live. “We also have cameras where we drive in with our prisoners through the sally port, which is an overhead door where the car can pull in and close the door behind them,” Bragg says.

The access-controlled gate features one camera on each side of the car, since officers will not know from which side the prisoner will exit. There is also a large parking lot in back of facility where the department keeps its 28 police cars. They keep a good eye on the cars, since each car has a laptop in it.

The fourth Dedicated Micros DVR is used in a unique manner. With only four inputs used, it captures images from 12 campuses via four PCs that are patched over dial-in. Each PC then dials into three or four facilities individually and simultaneously to connect to the 12 sites with analog capability.

“The weakest link of the school systems was that we had to dial into them,” Bragg says. “They were recorded on site-based VCRs, and people didn't remember to put tapes in, and they didn't always run all night.”

The Sprite 2s were used to retrofit 10 elementary schools and the Westfield ninth grade center and included upgrading the cameras from 8 to 16 each at the elementary campuses, Smith says.

ICTX also installed 16 Panasonic fixed, color CCD cameras. The cameras hold Computar lenses, which provide 480 lines of resolution, explains Matt Smith, project manager of ICTX, The Woodlands, Texas.

“The police department is really involved with the design phase of the project,” Smith says. “They lay out where they want the cameras, and we install them.”

ICTX installs the cameras, cable and the power supplies, and hooks them up to the DVRs. “Camera height is an issue for two reasons,” Smith says. “You have to have them high enough that kids can't reach them, but if you have them too high, you'll lose the depth and clarity.”

The next phase includes retrofitting the middle schools, each of which will have 35 cameras when it is completed, and retrofitting the administration complex. The two high schools have 80 cameras each due to the larger facility, more students, more hallways and bigger parking lots. They have installed PTZs in the high school parking lots.

“We have a new high school on the drawing board now, and the preliminary layout calls for 120 cameras,” Bragg says.

Bragg thought that at one new middle school, they could get by with just 24 cameras. But after six months, they identified a number of hotspots where kids hid and hung out, so they added 10 more cameras.

“We currently have nine new schools under construction; three middle, four elementary, one high school and an academy high school,” Bragg says. “The football stadium, maintenance and transportation buildings will also be retrofitted. We'll add about 350 more cameras and will be monitoring more than 1,000 cameras by the end of this project.”

The department is also experimenting with wireless solutions.

“My five-year plan includes a program to install 802.11 wireless cards in the laptop computers of all our patrol cars,” Bragg says. “In the future, if an alarm goes off, I want my officers to be able to pull up the campus on their vehicle laptop before they walk in on it.”

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

Computar	16
Dedicated Micros	17
ICTX	18
Panasonic	19
Samsung	20

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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