ROSEBURG, Ore.-Any robbers hitting Cascade Community FCU here will now be captured in full-color, high-definition video that can zoom down to the smallest of tattoos on a criminal's hand or scars on a face and, word-for-word, the writing on a robbery note.
"Police officers who see the video are blown away - our surveillance is more like casino-style, not financial institution," said Dale Debs, CIO at the $110-million CU. "We could extract robbery footage and e-mail it to police in a matter of minutes."
The $100,000 Internet Protocol (IP) video surveillance system at Cascade Community sheds light on crimes and misdemeanors in a way that far surpasses the CU's previous analog system. "With the light amplification qualities, I can look at a video monitor and see the parking lot at night far better than I can with my naked eye," Debs said. "The image quality is amazing."
The two-branch CU has only been robbed once, years ago, said Debs, and financial institutions in Roseburg, about 70 miles south of Eugene, haven't seen much action, either. "The crime rate isn't very high in Oregon," he noted, but that may be changing.
The 34 cameras, some with microphones, shooting up to three megapixels per image at 15 frames per second (over a gigabyte Ethernet to a 10-terabyte server at the main branch and a 6-terabyte server at the remote branch) all boil down to one thing: high-resolution intimidation, Debs said.
"It may be overkill, but we're seeing a definite increase in robberies in the cities to the south and north of us," he explained. "We ourselves have actually been cased. We're counting on the intimidation factor of the system as the payoff. A lot of our high-definition monitoring stations are visible to someone looking through the building."
Analog cameras and video are weak, typically delivering less than 520 lines of horizontal resolution, said Debs. "In some of those black-and-white robbery images we get from our credit union association, you can't even tell what the person looks like. You think, 'how are they ever going to catch that person?'"
The 1-year-old IP system is a long-term investment, said Debs. The cameras will need to be replaced every 10 years, whereas their analog counterparts last about three years, said Debs.
Meanwhile, the system is already making an impression on members, Debs continued.
"We can protect our reputation from members who say we didn't give them their money. For example, one young man pulled a sleight-of-hand cashing his paycheck. He picked on an inexperienced teller, endorsed his paycheck and then wadded it up in his hand. The teller counted the money in fans of $100 into his hand, and he walked out with the check and the money."
The teller came up short that day, said Debs. However, as each teller station is equipped with overhead IP cameras, and the surveillance servers can store 120 days of video of every transaction at the CU, the teller was able to "smart-search" and replay the transaction video - on her own desktop computer. In short order, she identified the scam.
"You could see exactly what transpired," Debs said. "We invited that young man to do business elsewhere."
In fact, tellers look back through their video archives anytime they are having trouble reconciling at the end of the day - a "huge benefit," he said.
Monitoring capabilities are extensive, he said. From the "command center" in the back office, Debs can get a live shot from up to 12 different cameras from either branch, all displayed in a grid on a 42-inch high-density screen. Double-clicking on one of the shots enlarges it to a full-screen view.
The system alerts Debs when one of the cameras registers motion in a sensitive area, such as near the vault, yet it allows him to lower the motion detection of trivial events, such as traffic on a nearby road. Debs simply uses the "matrix function" in the administrative console to overlay a grid on the video area. He then marks off cells in the grid to tell the system to ignore motion in those cells.
Installation is easy, as each camera runs both power and data over a single Power-over-Ethernet cable, he added. And because the system is based on IP, Debs can configure the cameras remotely over the network via the camera's IP address, he said.
The credit union's Milestones Systems surveillance solution from Brøndby, Denmark, is provided by IP ProTech, a video surveillance specialist in Beaverton, Ore.
For more information
www.cascadecu.org
www.ipprotech.com
www.milestonesys.com
