Crime watch on the move

The annual Irish Day Parade and Festivalheld each October in Long Beach, N.Y., grewfrom about 300 attendees 17 yearsago to about 30,000 last fall.The task of keeping all those people safefalls to the 77-person Long Beach PoliceDepartment. With entire sections of the townclosed to vehicle traffic for the all-day event,maintaining order is challenging, said Sgt.Bill Dodge.The police force often encounters problemsrelated to drinking and disorderly conduct atthe event, he said. "Policing is very difficultwhen you have a crowd that large. We neededto be able to get a big pictureof what was going on."For the most recent IrishDay, city officials installed atemporary wireless videosurveillance network from AgileMesh Inc.and Firetide Inc.The system uses mesh network technologyto link all cameras wirelessly. To be connectedto the network, each camera only needs to bein range of another camera/radio node, saidJoe Stefan, president and chief executive officerat AgileMesh of Richardson, Texas.The system is designed to provide videosurveillance anywhere with little warning.The technology is ideal for situations whentime or environmental constraints makestringing cable impossible.Firetide of Los Gatos, Calif., provides themesh networking technology for the portablesurveillance systems.They have several applications that areused extensively for law enforcement and tacticaldeployments, Stefan said."SWAT teams use it when theyhave a hostage situation or an active shootersituation, and they want 360-degree visibilityaround an incident."Users can quickly assemble the portable, selfpoweredsystem for such a situation. For theLong Beach deployment, an extensive sitesurvey located the placement of the cameras.AgileMesh systems were mounted on buildings,light poles and utility poles.The system also works well for asset protectionwhen whatever is being protected frequentlymoves around. NASA, for example,uses it to protect two valuable researchplanes. As they are moved from location tolocation, the video surveillance system goesalong.The cameras and radio nodes come inpairs, and there can be two cameras per radionode. The Camera Deployment Units includea single- or dual-dome camera and a heavydutytripod. The cameras have full pan, tiltand zoom capability and a 23x optical-zoomlens.The radio nodes are self-powered andcontain mesh networking radios and proprietarycontrol panels that allow the user toselect various frequency channels. Thatenables agencies to change the frequencyand the service set identifier. Two levels ofencryption ensure that nobody else picks upthe signal.The technology's biggest draw is the ease ofsetting up and using the cameras, Stefan said."They don't need to be a networking expertor an [information technology] person todeploy it," he said. "They just take them to alocation, turn them on and select a channel.The control panel on each node shows theusers how many other nodes it is in rangewith."For Long Beach, having a better ? thoughtemporary ? way of monitoring the crowdwas critical."An officer on the ground might be 30 or 40 feet away from an incident that's happeningand not be able to see it because the volumeof people is so great," Dodge said.In past years, commanders on the groundfound it difficult to send officers where theywere needed. Several of the town bars openbeer gardens for the event, and in previousyears it was impossible to see which oneswere drawing the biggest crowds.In addition to setting up the surveillancecameras, the police department publicizedthe technology that would be in place. Theywanted revelers to know they were beingwatched.The system comes with video-monitoringsoftware that is usually loaded onto a laptopPC in a command vehicle. Dodge said theLong Beach officer manning the laptop onIrish Day needed only about an hour's trainingon the software.AgileMesh's technology is designed to integratewith agencies' existing cameras. Analogcameras are plugged into a video encoderthat digitizes the picture, and the video isshared on the mesh network. Digital camerasare plugged directly into the radio nodes.The technology worked so well that LongBeach issued a request for a similar systemfor its housing authority's public-housingcomplex. The town wants a system that willallow officers to tap into a mesh video systemfrom their cars."I think this was the best Irish Day we'veever had," Dodge said, adding that the mostrecent festival drew the most attendees ever."It could have turned out to be somethingpretty bad, and it didn't," he said. "It turnedout to be a beautiful garden spot, [a] familyorientedevent for the entire day."