NYC’s Terror-Spotting Spycams Stuck in Traffic

The New York Police Department thinks it may have caught the wannabe Times Square car bomber on tape — and is hoping to use a $24 million phalanx of surveillance cameras to stop future attacks in midtown Manhattan. It’s a goal that’s unlikely to be reached anytime soon. New York’s original spycam array is running behind schedule. And the track record of large, metropolitan surveillance networks pre-empting terrorists is weak, at best.

“NYC is a high risk area,” New York officials note in a homeland security grant request, obtained by City Limits magazine. “One threat in particular involves a vehicle-borne improvised explosive” — a car bomb.

In 2006, the New York Police Department announced a three-year, $106 million plan that promised to prevent attacks on New York’s financial district with a web of license-plate readers, chemical sniffers, radiation detectors and 3,000 publicly and corporately owned cameras. All the information would then be channeled into a single coordination center. Specialized video intelligence algorithms would be used to spot would-be attackers as they case their targets. “This is aboutidentifying and eliminating a threat, rather than dealing with the consequences,” NYPD assistant chief John Colgan told me as planning for this Lower Manhattan Security Initiative got underway. “I’m not in the consequence-management business.”

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Police, Hopkins to Share Surveillance Video

Baltimore police are teaming up with the Johns Hopkins Hospital to share data from security cameras, marking the first time the city has partnered with a private agency to share surveillance footage.

Video from 136 cameras around the perimeter of the hospital's East Baltimore campus will stream into the city's surveillance office under a deal approved by the city's spending board last week. In exchange, Hopkins security staff will be able to access video from six city-operated cameras in the area.

"If an incident happens, the police will be able to pull it up in real time and view it," said Sheryl Goldstein, director of the Mayor's Office on Criminal Justice. The office seeks creative ways to work with public and private organizations to enhance safety, she said.

Although the hospital campus is patrolled by more than 100 security officers, violent crime from surrounding neighborhoods occasionally spills onto the campus. In September, two employees leaving the Kennedy Krieger Institute narrowly missed being struck by a stray bullet that lodged in the purse of one of the women.

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Surveillance Catches Woman and Two Children Stealing From Store on Christmas Day

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Clark has spent years reviewing videos of store crimes. But nothing prepared him for the video shot on Christmas Day at a Paramount clothing shop.

The surveillance tape shows a woman and two small boys walking into the store. As the woman distracts the clerk, the children grab money out of an unlocked cashier's drawer. The boys are also seen testing the store's antitheft alarm.

"This is the first for me," Clark said. "I've heard of it, but I've never seen it captured on video and with the children this young.

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Hotel staff take action during stabbing attack

The Prince George Hotel's staff and management are being praised by the RCMP for aiding in a weekend stabbing.

The victim, a 43-year-old man, and the assailant, a 46-year-old female, happened to get into an altercation on George Street in front of the hotel. Owner Ted Coole stressed that the two were not on the hotel's premises that day, and in fact they had both been ejected and barred from their property for past behaviour.

It was the hotel staff's quick action and the use of their surveillance video that halted the nasty situation and brought the help everyone respectively needed, said Coole.

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Consumer Electronics Affects Video Surveillance

Every January, Las Vegas hosts the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the biggest electronics shows in the world. Five years ago, vendors treated attendees to such innovations as megapixel cameras, next-generation DVD players that used the latest H.264 compression technology, large flat screen TVs and monitors, and new wireless technologies with much improved bandwidth for moving more data over the network. Fast forward to 2008 and look what vendors at the big physical security shows -- ISC West and ASIS -- are now showing: megapixel cameras, H.264 compression, wireless technologies with higher bandwidth and large flat-screen monitors.

In the '70s, it was the military and government that drove technology advancements. In the '80s and '90s, it was the business sector providing the push. Today, the enormous consumer electronics market is the driving force behind new technologies. The shift should not be surprising considering that Consumer Electronics Association reports that consumer electronics have grown into a $700 billion market worldwide. In the $10 billon video surveillance market, vendors are realizing it is smart to piggyback on innovations originally developed for consumers and repurposing them for physical security applications.

Read more to find out some of the consumer electronics trends that will play out in the physical security video surveillance arena in the coming year.

WOMAN CATCHES VANDAL ON SURVEILLANCE VIDEO

A repeat car vandal was finally caught after the owner installed a surveillance camera outside her home.

The woman who owns the Honda minivan claims her car has been repeatedly vandalized for several years, including broken side windows and a hole punched into the car's hood.

Less than a month after the surveillance system was set up, she caught the culprit.

The suspect actually got up on a chair and took down the camera in an attempt to confiscate the tape, but the footage was being recorded to a computer system inside the home.

Lionel Colon, 25, of Lawrence was arrested Friday after he was caught on camera and identified by the woman as a friend of her former brother-in-law.

Lawrence was charged with trespassing and larceny of property.

Apple Computers Interested in Surveillance?

You've probably heard plenty about video and access control companies working with Microsoft technology for their platforms. In the last year, a number of companies have promoted the fact that they are designed to interface to Microsoft's .NET platform, including HID, Lenel, Brivo and many other networked technology and security software companies.

Now, if a panel session at this upcoming ASIS show is any indication, Apple Computers may be following suit and interested in the security industry.

Video surveillance company videoNEXT announced this week that it is co-hosting a panel with Apple at the ASIS show. The panel features Garret Rice, senior manager of enterprise solutions for Apple as moderator, plus panelists Chris Gettings, founder and chairman of videoNEXT; John Honovich, founder of ipvideomarket.info; Steve Hunt of Hunt Business Intelligence; Peter Michael, principle engineer for surveillance and security at SAIC; and Fredrik Nilsoon, general manager of Axis in the Americas.

Burglars Captured on Home Surveillance System

Michael Crews doesn't know who broke into his home last weekend, but he knows what they look like after capturing video of the break-in on a home surveillance system.

Crews, who took his daughter to summer camp and was away for the weekend, came home to find a mess in his living room and a shattered window in his son's bedroom.

"(Police) couldn't quite identify what they used to break the window, but it was obvious they used something very heavy because it broke the frame as well," he said.