Reducing a city’s crime rate
The city of Aulnay-Sous-Bois in France was often criticized for its high crime rates. In 2014 it ranked highly in a list of crime levels in French cities. So the city needed to take action to reduce these rates, including building a city security operation center, increasing police activities in the field and focusing political attention on the problems.
Part of this action involved upgrading technology, and they turned to system integrators Trafic Transport Sûreté (TTS) who built a scalable video security system. The most recent additions to this system are state-of-the-art Hikvision cameras. The city is now classified as much more peaceful, dropping from the first group of cities in the list, to the last group.
Challenge
The obvious challenge here was to find the right technology to deliver the best crime-reducing results. But further, the solution needed to work with existing systems and be scalable to be able to anticipate the future needs. The city values innovation, and strives for the development of new technologies for image capture and system operations to better cover the public space, protect citizens, and support police forces as they carry out their duties.
More specifically, they needed to be able to effectively monitor areas to see the status of incidents taking place. They also wanted to be able to extract reliable video evidence in case of investigation.
The city also had to overcome the issue that police encountered hostile behavior when carrying out tasks. They needed to find a way to both enhance trust and protect officers from unfair accusations and even violence.
Finally, all this had to be integrated with an existing system that used Milestone Corporate Video Management Software.
Solution
One of the main resources the local police uses is its 100 m2 surveillance & operation center, now operating more than 500 cameras. The center’s 11-meter video wall and 7 operating stations use the Milestone Systems VMS and TTS sentinel PSIM, enabling operators to detect offenses and thefts, transmit information to the national police and secure the police forces in the field.
To enhance the existing system, TTS installed around 200 Hikvision cameras throughout the city. ANPR cameras allowed operators to clearly read licences plates and accurately classify vehicles. This provided the proof they needed that a vehicle was implicated in a specific criminal situation. It also allowed them to issue a fine when the driver was behaving illegally. Panovu and 4K cameras were installed, providing high quality video coverage of wide areas, making the security efforts more effective. PTZ cameras move automatically on different presets to cover the whole area in automatic patrol scenarios. When there is a need to reconstruct an incident, there is a good chance the PTZ has recorded entirely or partially the incident in order to extract video evidences.
When an operator wants to get a clear understanding of a abnormal detected situation, he takes the control of the PTZ with the keyboard and operates the camera manually. This can also be invaluable to help officers in the ground in real time. To provide support for officers in the field, the solution included 20 new generation body cameras, with HikCentral software to operate the 3 docking stations. These cameras help protect the police forces and the citizens during police operations. This combination of body cameras and digital evidence management software gives visibility and evidence, protecting both police and citizens. The system secures the data and easily extract comprehensive video and audio situations to better reconstruct a situation. This means police officers can close cases more quickly and effectively. This part of the solution was provided through law enforcement technologies supplier Allwan Security that has been distributing Hikvision body camera solutions since 2017.
TTS specifically chose Hikvision products to enhance Aulnay-Sous-Bois’s system because of their high quality and performance, the wide choice of products to meet the varied needs, and their ability to integrate seamlessly into the Milestone Corporate software platform.
“The cameras also offer high performances image analysis functions that are or will be used by the customer to optimize their operations”, says Bruno Fihol, TTS Project Manager.
Loïc le Roux, Deputy Managing Director of Public Life Services, says: “With Hikvision we have innovation, we have development, and we have anticipation. We are really satisfied with the cameras and body-cameras supplied by Hikvision. We also need to be mindful of the future, and this system is scalable, allowing us to react to situations and threats as they change.”
Crimes have dropped dramatically in the city. For example, robberies have dropped 30% over the last 6 years, proving the value of an integrated security system. The addition of these Hikvision cameras, will maintain this trend, which provides a new picture and reputation for the previously ‘crime-plagued’ city of Aulnay-Sous-Bois.
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