by Shane Henson — August 21, 2013—IQinVision, a provider of high-performance, HD (high-definition) megapixel IP (Internet protocol) cameras, recently announced that the Caddo Parish Public School system in Louisiana chose to use IQinVision Megapixel Surveillance System throughout the entire school district in efforts to better monitor the grounds and protect students and staff. This major, ongoing project involves the installation of more than 7,000 cameras and is being managed by Stanley Security Solutions.
Prior to upgrading to IP megapixel surveillance, Caddo employed a variety of surveillance technologies that varied from campus to campus. Steve White, director of construction and capital projects for Caddo Schools, noted that that they suffered from storage issues with the old DVR (digital video recorder) technology and were not meeting the school system’s needs.
The move to unify and upgrade all surveillance technologies started in the summer of 2011 and was given a push by the need to consolidate some of the schools. White explained, “We had some under-utilized high schools, so we closed some middle schools and combined the students, putting grades 7-12 together to get building utilization up to where we wanted it.”
The number of IQeye cameras deployed in the elementary schools is the smallest, running about 100; middle schools require approximately 150 to 200 cameras; and the high schools often deploy 300 or more cameras. Caddo Parish has installed around 4,000 cameras to date, and upon completion, approximately 7,000 total IQeye HD megapixel cameras will be deployed.
IQeye Alliance dome and Sentinel Series models were selected, and the camera resolutions range from 1 megapixel (MP) up to 5MP, depending upon area of coverage and desired image quality needs. White estimates that 80 percent of the cameras will be installed inside school buildings and the remaining 20 percent outside.
Both White and Roy Murray, director of security, report that a number of criminal and non-criminal incidents are regularly investigated and solved using their new IP video surveillance capability. For items that are taken or misplaced around the schools, the vast majority are retrieved because system operators now have the image quality to make positive IDs on who was involved in such incidents.
“The video tells the whole, unbiased truth,” Murray commented. “No more ‘he said, she said;’ we know what actually happened in the incidents we need to investigate. Our cameras are an unbiased third party.”
