New $1.6 Million In-Car Computing, Video Camera System Debuts in San Mateo County Sheriff's Vehicles

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office is about to start recording far more of what they do.

Come this fall, 80 Sheriff’s Office vehicles will be outfitted with new in-car computing and video camera equipment funded by the Sheriff’s Office year-end savings.

The $1.6 million project, which includes cameras, in-car computers, mobile networking equipment and installation, was approved by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in 2015.

With the installation phase of the project almost complete, deputies will soon be driving around in cars well-equipped for the 21st century, providing new technology for a complete video and audio record of service calls.

“The video system is a great investment for the Sheriff’s Office and San Mateo County,” said Sheriff Carlos Bolanos. “It has many benefits and will be used for training, investigations and sharing of information with our community.”

Watch Guard, the manufacturer of the law enforcement in-car video system, includes five years of maintenance with the purchase of the equipment and “the option to seamlessly integrate with body-worn cameras in the future,” said Bolanos.

The in-car camera system plugs and plays with wearable body cams, but for now the focus is to tune up all of the computing and video systems in cars that did not have any in-car cameras or were outfitted with outdated or out-of-service cameras, Bolanos said.

The idea to move ahead with the project began early last year when Chris Flatmoe, director of IT Services for the Sheriff’s Office, took notice of the outdated systems.

“Many cars have inoperable and outdated equipment,” said Flatmoe. “We recognized a need to outfit all cars that perform service calls with a new technology that would provide even better public safety training opportunities and an objective perspective on incidents, strengthening our relationship with San Mateo County residents.”

The new technology can also be used to provide crucial video for investigations and preserve evidence to use in court.

Each vehicle will have two high definition cameras configured for continuous background recording, ensuring events are always recorded. One camera faces forward between the rearview mirror and the windshield. A rearward facing camera captures the backseat and back window.

“The new in-car computing system is rugged with backlit keyboards,” said Flatmoe, “and provides access to critical law enforcement applications such as Computer Aided Dispatch and the County’s Records Management Information System.”

Part of the system’s extensive installation process includes installing wireless access points at the four substations in Redwood City, Moss Beach, San Carlos and Millbrae, where the video is automatically uploaded to a video storage server.

As soon as a deputy pulls into range of the private WiFi network, the system starts uploading video, said Flatmoe.

That video is sent to a central video repository, “a very large video storage server located at the County data center in Redwood City,” said Flatmoe. “Using browser-based technology, the video can be reviewed, marked for archive and after two years can be overwritten or will be kept longer if the footage is part of an ongoing investigation or case. This allows the Sheriff’s Office to access records and manage the system in a very reliable way.”

To ensure the integrity of the captured video, only authorized personnel can access that data.

“It’s the innovation behind the technology, however, that is pretty remarkable,” said Flatmoe.

The system allows law enforcement to go back in time and record an event after it happened.

“This system is more than just a ‘push to operate’ camera,” said Flatmoe. “It’s always running and recording to a local hard drive. When something important happens, deputies can activate the camera manually or with an auto-trigger, and the camera system will go back 90 seconds when it starts the video capture.”

This important feature allows a deputy to activate the camera system by turning on the light bar if someone were to drive through a four-way stop, for example.

“The video capture will then go back 90 seconds from camera start and capture that incident,” said Flatmore.

There are four ways to auto trigger the camera: activating the light bar, triggering a G sensor, by speed or turning on the microphone. The driver can also activate the camera manually.

So for over the course of a 12-hour shift, a deputy may only have two hours of captured video. But if need be, stored video can be accessed up to a few days after an event occurred.

“Many people have worked hard on this project for us,” said Bolanos, “and we look forward to using this tool in the field as it will be a great benefit for us and the communities we serve."

– By Christa Bigue, County of San Mateo / Images courtesy of the County of San Mateo.