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IACP: Body Cam Storage Success

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Marking the 123rd IACP with Tips to Make Selecting On-Premise Body Cam Storage & Management as Easy as 1, 2, 3

We’re excited to attend the IACP Annual Conference and Exposition in San Diego this week on Oct. 15-18. Each year, thousands of dedicated professionals from federal, state, county, local and tribal agencies attend IACP to learn about the newest intelligence, strategies and tech solutions available to blog1law enforcement.

Among the topics likely to attract attention and spark discussions are body cams and the importance of gathering electronic evidence. With an overwhelming 99 percent of public safety experts agreeing that video surveillance technology will play a significant role in their ability to prevent crime, theft and terrorism over the next five years, it’s more critical than ever to ensure we’re utilizing video data to its potential.

The increase in video data means there is a massive potential for enhanced situational awareness and better intelligence – but only if the data is analyzed.

In honor of the IACP’s 123rd year, we’re sharing tips to help make selecting on-premise body cam storage and management as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Beyond Body Cams

While body cams are certainly getting their share of coverage lately, it’s important to remember body cams are just one component of the video data that public safety departments are tasked with managing. Today’s public safety environments also consist of video, surveillance cameras, drones, in-car video, mobile devices and more. Progressive public safety departments must build a data platform that can collect, store and manage these individual pools of data. A common infrastructure provides a more cost-effective storage environment, more control of the data and better security.

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2. Costly Clouds

Last month, the Associated Press reported police departments in Indiana and Kentucky have halted the use of body cams, citing new laws that would require the video to be stored longer and thereby significantly increasing the cost. On average, each body cam requires a minimum of 1TB of storage per year. Competing cloud solutions charge over $1,400/year – per camera. For a police department that has 500 body cameras, that can quickly add up, with the cost of storage for body cams totaling approximately $700,000 annually in perpetuity. Department heads trying to maintain budgets and plan for additional personnel to monitor the data should consider alternative storage solutions that cost considerably less to deploy and provide an overall better total cost of ownership.

3. Open to New Solutions

Open platform enables departments to integrate body cam data with the best available industry applications. To avoid the risk of limiting video to a single company’s platform, departments should bypass a closed solution as it may prevent other key applications gaining access to that data. Because the video world is constantly changing, an open platform will enable departments to implement the best solutions today and tomorrow.

Read more about our storage solutions here or visit us at Booth 820 and Booth 5307 at IACP. We look forward to seeing you there!

About the Author: Ken Mills

A leader in the Video Surveillance industry for over 15 years, Ken Mills is the General Manager & Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Dell EMC for the Surveillance and Reconnaissance business, and is regarded as one of the company’s top surveillance and public safety experts. Ken has been instrumental in establishing and growing this business and in the development and marketing of Dell EMC Surveillance solutions that greatly improve the performance, reliability, and manageability of enterprise surveillance infrastructure systems. After serving in the Navy as a nuclear engineer, Ken spent five years as a partner in one of the largest contract field sales organizations in the United States. He subsequently became a founding member of the Cisco Systems incubation organization, Emerging Technologies, whose goal was to identify the next billion-dollar businesses for Cisco. Ken quickly became a leader at Cisco and spent almost 8 years building a thriving business for Cisco focused on Surveillance, Access Control, and Emergency Response. Ken joined Dell EMC in 2013 to help the company build what has become a thriving business around Surveillance. He is responsible for developing the concept of a “Public Safety Data Lake,” where agencies can leverage enterprise data management solutions to address the growing demand for storage and security, and has published numerous articles about public safety technology trends. Ken is a founding member of the Cyber Security Advisory Board for the Security Industry Association and is on the Board of Directors for the Security Industry Association. Ken is an Advisory Board Member to the National Spectator Sports Safety and Security organization and is also Fellow with United States State Department. He is uniquely qualified to discuss the Dell EMC value proposition for Surveillance.