Caught in the act

A TiVo-style digital video system designed for police cruisers is making it easier for officers on patrol to make charges stick against lawbreakers and avoid frivolous lawsuits. The Tyler Police Department in East Texas recently outfitted its 60 patrol cars with dash-mounted systems, saying the technology helps catch criminals in the act and, over the long term, saves money. “Now that I’ve got them on video, I figure, ‘Let’s go to court, I’d be happy to play them for you,’ ” Tyler police officer John Weavers said. Tyler, a city of about 83,000 people some 90 miles east of Dallas, is one of seven police departments using a digital video system from IBM’s Global Services division and Coban Research and Technologies Inc., a small, private company near Houston. The product is one of the first specifically designed for law enforcement. Police in Yakima were the first to use it, outfitting 35 marked patrol cars about a year ago. Tyler, which had been testing the system for months, recently began using it full-time. The systems cost from $7,000 to $10,000 per car, about the same as traditional analog video systems. With analog, however, there’s the added expense of storing hundreds or thousands of videotapes taken during domestic disputes, traffic violations and drug busts. The camera makes video continuously, but records only what an officer specifies, plus the previous minute — another advantage over analog, which lacks a “pre-event” record feature. The video is then saved to a high capacity computer server, eliminating the need for a staff of clerical workers and a separate storage room to file and retrieve stacks of video tapes. An added bonus for officers is that information, from driver’s license data to satellite GPS coordinates, can be tagged to the video, making it easy to search from officers’ desktop computers. Tyler police said they expect to save about $50,000 a year in labor, management and supply costs with the new system. In the year since the system was deployed in Yakima, it has proven especially effective in protecting police from lawsuits and complaints against officers, Capt. Jeff Schneider said. “They tend not to go to court a whole lot once the defense looks at the videotape,” he said. Tyler police aren’t stopping with digital video. While still months away, the next step is to add a wireless Internet network that will allow department headquarters to watch the streaming videos in real time, Sgt. John Bausell said. “I think they’re about to explode in the market,” Bausell said of the video systems. “You’re going to start seeing it pretty widespread.”