Chasing crimes in real-time with city and community-sourced video
Rockford Police Department partners with Axis Communications and Montel Technologies to help track, apprehend and prosecute lawbreakers
“Our Axis cameras and MTOP system continue to play a critical role in our ability to build solid cases and successfully prosecute crime,” said Lt. Robert Reffett, Intel Special Operations Unit of the Rockford Police Department.
Mission
The Rockford Police Department was at a crossroad. Its aging, hardwired analog video surveillance cameras weren’t delivering the kind of image details essential for investigating criminal activity. Its police car cameras could only provide situational awareness of the immediate vicinity. The police department needed a technology solution with a much broader scope. What they wanted was a comprehensive information gathering system that would allow them to aggregate video data from multiple sources and push it out to officers and detectives on the street in real time.Solution
The Rockford PD hired Montel Technologies, a unified security solutions provider and Axis partner, to devise a system to collect data from multiple sources – IP cameras, multiple VMS’s, computers, cellphones, drones and other video sources – and display it on a single operations platform. In addition to receiving streaming video from the city’s 20 HDTV-resolution Axis network cameras, the Montel solution (MTOP) supports the integration of surveillance cameras from community businesses into the Rockford PD system for more city-wide situational awareness. To help secure crowded public events like the Fourth of July festival or the weekly outdoor city market in the summertime, Montel lends the Rockford PD a rugged mobile security unit equipped with a mast-mounted HDTV-resolution Axis network camera that streams video and audio to a mobile command center via cellular or satellite communication.Result
With the Axis/MTOP solution the Intel Special Operations (ISO) unit can see criminal activity from multiple vantage points, help officers track suspects’ movements in real time as they flee a scene, and provide prosecutors with a wealth of credible forensic evidence. As the community sees criminal apprehension on the rise, more local businesses and private citizens are deciding to integrate their surveillance cameras with the MTOP system and become part of Rockford PD’s public safety and security initiative.Related links
AXIS Q61 Series PTZ Network CamerasSafe cities