Case Study

Footscray PoliceDepartment
Footscray Police Department adopts
Genetec’s Omnicast video surveillance system
to increase city-wide safety and fight crime
Located just 5 km west of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Footscray is a small suburb which
is home to a diverse and multicultural population of over 75,000. As part of the City ofMaribyrnong, Central Footscray is bustling with a myriad of shops and restaurants, andits easy transportation via bus or train to Melbourne continues to spur growth in the area.
Footscray’s convenient location has also attracted many new businesses and recently,
local government initiated plans for a $500 million high-density commercial and residential
development project.
Business challenge
Like most developing suburbs, Footscray was seeing an increasein street-level crime such as gang activity, drug trafficking,assaults, theft and vandalism. Although the Footscray Police
Department was working around the clock to apprehend suspects
and deter criminal activities, lack of technology, specifically video
surveillance, forced them to be more reactive than proactive when
responding to critical events.
According to Brendan O’Mahoney, Detective Acting Sergeantat Footscray Crime Investigation Unit, “We ran a number ofoperations over the years where we would install covert cameras; sowe would put them up and then take them down, but this becamevery costly in terms of money, time and resources.”“To meet Footscray’s most important
requirement of 99.9% system availability,
SNP incorporated every advanced
failover and redundant archiving featurefrom Omnicast and even leveraged
on-board recording from Axis network
cameras. When it comes to reliability,
Omnicast has it all.”

Detective O’Mahoney knew Footscray needed to get Maribyrnong
City Council on board to help fund the implementation of amore permanent video surveillance system. He recruited histeam and brought forth the case to City Council representatives
who recognized the value the surveillance system would offer;
not only in terms of increasing safety and deterring crime, but inencouraging more local development and business in the area.

needed to be user-friendly so new officers with little experience onvideo surveillance could be trained quickly.

End-user needs

SNP, the largest family-owned security company in Australia,
alongside OPS, Genetec’s Value-Added Distributor in Australia,
came up with the winning design with Genetec’s video surveillancesystem Omnicast, Axis Communications cameras, Dell servers andFiretide wireless infrastructure mesh network.

It was at this point in time that the Footscray PD, with the helpof a security consultant, IPP, compiled and sent out a Request
for Proposal (RFP) detailing their high-level requirements forthe solution. They offered four main criteria as guidance: 1) thegeneral areas where video surveillance coverage was required; 2)
the solution had to able to grow and accommodate the very latest
security technologies; 3) the system had to offer 99.9% reliability
where video would always be available; and 4) the video platform“We wanted to leave it to the market to propose the best solutionthat could also keep up with the latest technology,” explained
Detective O’Mahoney. “We prioritized certain requirements andareas of town which needed surveillance coverage and let theintegrators suggest both the design and solution.”

The perfect solution
It took SNP and OPS about 3 months to get Footscray’s new
stand-alone video surveillance system up and running; a truly

Footscray Police Department · Case Study

impressive feat for a brand new city-wide surveillance systemcomprising the latest security innovations.
Today, Omnicast manages video feeds from over 35 pole-mounted
Axis network cameras spread out across 16 different locationsin the suburb. The network cameras connect back to the police
station network wirelessly via a Firetide wireless infrastructuremesh network which was chosen for its flexibility and its ability
to deliver real-time video at approximately one tenth the cost of awired system. The 400 Mbps wireless network includes 20 Firetide
HotPort 802.11n MIMO mesh nodes positioned at each camera,
the police station and other intermediate locations. The wirelessnodes form a network of multiple paths from which video can beinstantly redirected over alternate routes in case of congestion orpower failure.
Video feeds are then cabled down to an off-the-shelf Dell storagearray offering 24TB of storage, and finally sent to the Omnicast
client application which is installed on two workstations; one in
the police station control room and another in the duty room.
“To meet Footscray’s most important requirement of 99.9%
system availability, SNP incorporated every advanced failover andredundant archiving feature from Omnicast and even leveraged
on-board recording from Axis network cameras,” said Kobi BenShabat, Managing Director at OPS. “When it comes to reliability,
Omnicast has it all.”
Omnicast’s Failover Directory provides a hot standby to Footscray
PD’s client connections and security system policies in case of aninterrupted connection. Omnicast’s Failover Archiving was also
incorporated to preserve the communication with the cameras in caseof failure and Auxiliary Archiving was used to further strengthen
system availability by recording video with different quality andretention time. SNP and Footscray even went one step further toincorporate a revolutionary concept called Video Trickling, madepossible by both Axis IP network cameras and Omnicast.
“We needed to use a particular type of camera, in this case an Axis
network camera which had onboard recording,” clarified Stuart
Pitcher, National Operations Manager at SNP. “If the camera
detected it was not talking back to the system, it could actually
start copying and saving the video to its built-in SD card.”
Then, Omnicast’s Video Trickling feature would ensure that video
created is retained in memory, in case the units were offline. Whenthe connection comes back, Omnicast’s Auxiliary Archiver resumes
recording and the system automatically starts transferring the videoof the units that were affected by the connection failure. Only thevideo recorded while units were disconnected is transferred.
More than on-board storage, the Axis cameras, which included
AXIS Q6034-E PTZ dome network cameras and AXIS P1344-E
and P1346-E fixed network cameras, were perfect for thecompletely network-based solution offering full IP capabilities andHD video quality of 720p and 1080p. Simple configuration of thecameras in Omnicast ensures video is displayed and recorded at 12frames per second using H.264 compression.

2“We do run a training program for all
new members, but the easiest way to getthem familiar with the system is to havean operator buddy-up and watch how
another operator maneuvers through thesystem. After 5 or 10 minutes of playing
with the system, they are basically readyto go at it alone.”“Omnicast is very user-friendly and our police officers find it very
intuitive,” said Detective O’Mahoney. “We do run a training
program for all new members, but the easiest way to get themfamiliar with the system is to have an operator buddy-up andwatch how another operator maneuvers through the system. After
5 or 10 minutes of playing with the system, they are basically readyto go at it alone.”The benefits
To date, Footscray PD and Maribyrnong City Council haveachieved much more than they expected from their new citywide surveillance system. According to Detective O’Mahoney,“Robberies and street offenses have drastically decreased since
implementing the system. Drug offenses have gone up but we arebeing much more proactive and efficient at catching more people,
so we anticipated this.”With one control room primarily being used for after-the-fact
investigations and the other for 24/7 manned monitoring, Footscray
is able to both actively and passively monitor their surroundings.

Footscray Police Department · Case Study“If a call comes over the radio, the patrol unit might call into
headquarters and ask to have the cameras checked,” described
Detective O’Mahoney. “We get a lot of efficiency out of it, interms of not having to patrol at the wrong time or when nothing ishappening at all. On the other hand, when there is a problem, they
can actually focus in on the situation and send out the troops.”
Footscray authorities have also been able to apprehend warranted
suspects without physical addresses by catching them on cameras
and regularly using video footage as supporting evidence in court.
This has been facilitated by Omnicast’s Bookmark feature whereoperators are now required to bookmark every event, and writea really brief description of what was going on, along with theunit code that handled the dispute. Detective O’Mahoney added,“Later on, we can use the search tool to easily find what we arelooking for.”

Key Features
The AXIS Q6034-E PTZ Dome Camera
provides outstanding video quality andperformance. The outdoor-ready PTZ
dome provides HDTV coverage of large
areas, great details when zooming in,and high-speed pan/tilt performance.
With Active Gatekeeper, the camera canautomatically move to a preset position
upon motion detection in a pre-definedarea, and track the detected object.
For more information, visit www.axis.com.

And thanks to Omnicast’s open architecture and other advanced
features, Footscray is looking to further strengthen and grow thesystem. Support from local businesses and real estate developers
have ushered in possibilities to widen their reach at no cost to
the tax payers. Using Genetec’s Federation, Footscray PD canoffer business and residential developments added protection bypulling up their cameras in case of emergencies; a win-win forboth police departments who require better situational awarenessand for developers and owners who can use the added security as amarketing tool.

3Footscray Police Department · Case Study

Footscray is also currently testing mobile capabilities where imagesof suspects are downloaded and sent to all patrolling officers’
emails. “Rather than giving out a description, we can send an
actual still image of our suspect with the exact clothing that they
are wearing at that time,” said Detective O’Mahoney. “We’ve used
it quite a bit on half a dozen iPhones and Android phones so far
and it’s been fantastic. We’ve also tested mobile capabilities using
the wireless system with in-vehicle laptops so we can watch live
footage as well.”
As more and more councils around Victoria seek to implementcity-wide surveillance systems, there is no doubt to SNP and OPS
that Footscray’s system will be used as a best-in-class example. The
combination of Genetec’s Omnicast video management platform,
Axis Communications network cameras, Dell Servers and Firetide
network makes for an extremely robust and highly-effective crimefighting tool.
But in this Footscray installation, Detective O’Mahoneysummarized it best: “For what we put out as a tender to themarket, I had no idea that the quality of the system would be as
impressive as what we have ended up with. Omnicast and thecapabilities of the entire system continue to astonish us. This new
surveillance system has gone completely beyond our expectations.”“We’ve used the mobile capabilities quite
a bit on half a dozen iPhones and Android
phones so far and it’s been fantastic.”

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