Vicksburg City Council and Aldermen Board voted 3-0 on Friday to pursue a contract for a new surveillance cameras to assist in law enforcement.
The system was developed and operated by the non-profit team Project New Orleans.
Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs Jr. he said he is a supporter of the camera system.
He said: “It gives us some preventive measures in neighboring areas with a total of 911. “This is an advanced level of security. It makes full use of technology.”
A team of Vicksburg officers visited the Project Real Orleans Real-Time Crime Center on Wednesday at New Orleans University. The group included Flaggs, Police Chief Penny Jones, North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, and South Ward Alderman Alex Monsour, among others. The purpose of the trip was to get information about the surveillance camera system that the city currently uses.
The goal of Project NOLA is to develop and implement high-cost high-tech cameras, shotguns and cameras that monitor camera plates in areas of need.
Officials were advised by Bryan Lagarde, Criminologist and Executive Director of Project NOLA. Lagarde said the one thing that sets the organization apart from other camera surveillance programs is price.
Lagarde said the high initial costs and maintenance costs of some of the camera systems are hampering their usefulness.
Because of (those high costs), cameras are often mounted on intersections. They are very responsible for road accidents, things like that, ”he said.
Those cameras end up losing more serious offenses in areas with less traffic.
King Jones announced his support for the administration of the cameras at a board meeting on Friday.
“I feel like the NOLA Camera System is what Vicksburg needs right now. We’ve seen so many things, so many different crimes but they haven’t been divided in one place; they happen everywhere,” he said. that is a good thing we need for the city of Vicksburg to help us solve many of these crimes. “
Aldermen Mayfield and Monsour agreed to their views at a board meeting.
According to Project NOLA, the average cost per camera from the organization is only $ 150. The average installation cost $ 150, and the annual cost of operating the cameras is an average of $ 180 per year. The cost category is determined by the needs of the area.
Lagarde added that lower costs are not the only advantage of choosing their own cameras than the choice of other independent companies. He said technology was also advanced.
After the presentation on Project NOLA, city officials were brought to the monitoring area, an area about the size of a living room with a series of televisions covering one of the walls.
While there, Lagarde demonstrated the power of the cameras. One of the screens showed a pre-recorded video of other raccoons scurrying about in the dump overnight. The event was clearly staged. Lagarde began to zoom in, revealing that a camera had been installed in the parking lot, a few hundred meters away.
Project NOLA cameras are capable of recording video up to 32 megapixels. Genetec is an independent company that offers similar services. Genetec cameras, according to Lagarde, usually record video at 1080p, about 2.1 megapixels.
The video and data collected are stored on servers at Project NOLA for two weeks, where they are easily accessible to law enforcement. Many law enforcement agencies that use this method also set up their own monitoring stations such as where the show took place. Flaggs said he hopes to have a similar monitoring room for VPD.
The software used by the cameras contains many independent tools for face recognition and recording of license plates. Tags are applied automatically to cars and individuals. So a law enforcement officer can, for example, search a man wearing shorts with a red shirt or a license plate, and then provide him with video footage instead of filtering video footage.
Lagarde also said their facial recognition was superior to other systems.
He said: “Recognizing the cultural face is unfair to African-Americans because many cameras have problems comparing.” “They only see dark skin. Our cameras, especially infrared (mode), are able to see in real time regardless of color and time of day. ”
Project NOLA cameras can detect infrared light as well as visible light. At night, each camera emits its own light source in the form of an infrared ray, invisible to the human eye. This allows the cameras to take pictures that would otherwise not have been used.
Lagarde says the movement started after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was facing, among many other problems, a shortage of existing police. “We had to do something that worked as a good way to increase the power, where the cameras would continue to improve (the capacity of) a few police officers that we were working on. left until we can add numbers.
Currently, there are more than 5,000 Project NOLA cameras in downtown New Orleans. However, the city has to pay for only 500 of those cameras.
After the first election on Friday, Flaggs said he was determined to work on the next step in installing the Vicksburg cameras.
“The second step would be to bring together a group of people to find out how many places we need and to find places (where) we need to put them,” he said. “And I suggest we put them (in areas with) 911 hotlines and in divisions where we know there is only one way out.”
Natchez City adopts camera system in 2018. According to the Project NOLA website, “Natchez PD Chief Armstrong thanked Project NOLA for a 92% reduction in homicide and a significant reduction in services. 911 for major criminal service history.
