Big City PSIM Claims Reviewed

Published on Nov 21, 2013

Generated for Carlton Purvis on Apr 25, 2014 for Your Use Only - No Sharing - No
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The U.S. has one of the highest crime rates in the world. Within the U.S.,
Baltimore is one of the worst and its need for security and surveillance is
particularly acute. IPVM recently participated in a tour of the city's
command center during Secured Cities. In this note, we examine the
system and some of the more unrealistic claims made.
System Overview
Baltimore named the system 'Citiwatch.' The system monitors 635
cameras, up from 50 in 2006. It integrates cameras from Maryland
Departments of Transportation, Emergency Management and Homeland
Security among other agencies.
Baltimore ocials noted that in 2012 Citiwatch:
Participated in 1,363 arrests
Conducted 1,835 video searches that identied criminal suspects
Initiated 187 arrests for violent crimes (including robberies, rapes
and murders - though not broken down)
Initiated 33 illegal weapons arrest
The City of Baltimore's surveillance operators can view TV news feeds,
social media streams and surveillance images simultaneously using a
Vidsys PSIM. They coordinate with police on the ground and other
agencies via radio and provide an extra set of eyes during arrests and
investigations. The screen layouts were easily congurable, and there are
a number of ways to call up video.
While the city did not allow photographs, the command center was about
the size of two conference rooms, with one side containing a large

screen monitor and a conference table and the other side had cubicles
and desks for 15 to 18 operators. At that time of the tour, there were 10
operators (retired police ocers) working. Shifts last for eight hours.
This is how operator stations look and here is how it looks on the big
screen:

The top left of the screen is a Google Map operators can click to see
cameras in a certain location. The center screen is a Department of
Transportation camera. The bottom left is a transit system camera. And
to the right behind the director is a weather advisory map being
accessed from a web browser. The far left of the screen is a list of
cameras and locations.
Questionable Claims
There are a few claims made by Citiwatch Director Police Lieutenant
Samuel Hood during the tour that deserve some scrutiny:
Instant Access to Cameras
In a presentation at Secured Cities the day prior to the tour, he said other

agency's cameras could be called up instantaneously, but during the

tour, instantaneous often meant within a couple minutes, the time it took
the system access the camera with a loading icon / symbol displayed for
a period of time. "Instant access" is dierent than "access in two
minutes," especially in an emergency or responding to a live security
incident.
Capturing Bullets on Camera While Recording at 30fps
The director showed an image from a shooting captured on video at
night. A circle on the image highlighted what he said was a bullet frozen in
time by a camera recording at 30fps. What it looked like to me was a
cloud of discharge residue, which would be visible longer than a bullet
and would linger long enough to be captured on camera. It would be an
extremely lucky shot to freeze a bullet with a camera recording at 30fps,
especially considering in photography it would take at least 500fps in
good light to capture a clear shot of a moving baseball.
No Need For Chases
The Director said that Citiwatch has eliminated the need for police
pursuits.
"If a suspect runs around a corner, we just catch up to them on the next
block [with the cameras]," he said. This sounds good in theory, but
having so many cameras probably helps with pursuits rather then
eliminating them. Beyond that, 635 cameras for a city is far from
saturated enough to ensure such continuity of coverage.
Operators are Constantly Catching Crimes in Progress
The cameras are monitored around the clock. Hood said operators will
routinely alert police to crimes before dispatchers even get a 911 call.
Hood did not provide any hard numbers on how many times police were
dispatched based on something an operator observed, but said it
happened "all the time."
He showed past surveillance video footage of various crimes from
robbery to riots, but from most of the videos, there is no way to tell what
initiated the operator to key in on a suspect - a call or observation.
What the videos did show however is that the operators do have some

skill in detecting when a person is carrying a concealed weapon and

determining suspicious activity. In one video, the operator tracked a man
acting suspiciously near a row of parked cars. The operator used the
camera to follow the man until he broke a car window, then had police
dispatched to the location. In another video an operator notices what
looks like a concealed weapon under a teen's jacket. The operator
coordinates a stop with police and ocers nd a gun on the teen.
Caught up in the Hype
I think this goes to show that even end users can sometimes get caught
up in the hype when they have an audience. Seeing the system in action
was impressive, but saying it puts an end to chases and captures bullets
on camera is a stretch. The Citiwatch slogan is "Believe," but hopefully
people are able to take these claims with a grain of salt.
No Information on Coordination
The tour focused on the functionality of a PSIM once it was already in
place and little about what it took to set it up. The project took
coordination with a number of agencies including the Maryland
Departments of Transportation, Emergency Management and Homeland
Security, who are all using dierent systems, but accessible through
Citiwatch. A good follow-up to the presentation would be an information
session on facilitating collaboration between the agencies, which probably
had unique challenges as well.

Comments (13)
Vasiles Kiosses

5 months ago

This is a good article. It shows that there is still a

large gap between TV/Filme and the reality of real
surveillance systems. Its very hard to get an
audience with the implementers on how they went

about it. They tend to hide behind the security

screen "I cant tell you that otherwise we would be
exposing our weaknesses"

Derek Ward

5 months ago

IPVM Administrator

Very interesting article. I wonder what the response

time is from when a surviellance operator conrms a
suspisious suspect to a police response and possible
arrest. Also, the section pertaining to a camera
capturing a moving bullet at 30FPS had me laughing.
The Citiwatch slogan "Beleive" sure is betting.

Carlton Purvis

IN

REPLY TO

DEREK WARD

5 months ago

IPVM Administrator

The response time is pretty fast. Operators have

direct radio contact with police.

Luis Carmona

5 months ago

People rarely want to admit mistakes in some things

like purchasing decision and will try to put on a best
face, especially when the public is there in your face
judging value.
But overall I don't think it's a bad system. It certainly
didn't need the embellishments.

Ari Erenthal

5 months ago

There are only three statistics I care about, and I

only see one of them: participation in arrest (which
we see), participation in prosecution, and cost per

succesful prosecution.
Arrest is nothing without prosecution, or at least an
attempt at prosecution. And the NYPD's stop and frisk
policies show that you don't need to have a lot of
fancy, expensive technology to arrest everyone who
looks suspicious or walks funny, just a lot of cops.
How can we evaluate the eectiveness of this system
without these statistics?

mark seifert

5 months ago

A comprehensive study of the Baltimore PD was just

released last week. At a cost of $285,000, the report
discusses certain aspects of CitiWatch. As one of the
most violent cities in America, I think one has to ask
"What would the city look like without CitiWatch and
how can CitiWatch become even more eective?". I
participated in this tour and denitely learned a few
things to apply in my agency.

John Honovich

IN

REPLY TO MARK SEIFERT

5 months ago

IPVM Administrator

Mark, thanks for sharing that. What cost $285,000?

The report or the system? If it's the report, that
sounds like a lot. If it's the system, that sounds way
too low :)

mark seifert

IN

REPLY TO JOHN

HONOVICH

5 months ago

John
The consultant's report cost $285,000. Not sure
about the entire CitWatch system.

Christian Laforte

5 months ago

"In a presentation at Secured Cities the day prior to

the tour, he said other agency's cameras could be
called up instantaneously, but during the tour,
instantaneous often meant within a couple minutes,
the time it took the system access the camera with a
loading icon / symbol displayed for a period of time.
"Instant access" is dierent than "access in two
minutes," especially in an emergency or responding
to a live security incident."
I nd this problem surprising... we have delivered

many interagency projects (e.g. safe city, defense)

and we have yet to encounter this kind of issue. Did
they provide any explanation on why this delay
occured? Maybe there a "human in the loop", e.g.
another agency's operator must rst manually
authorize the transmission of video to Citywatch?
Christian Laforte
CEO, Fortem

John Honovich

IN

REPLY TO

C HRISTIAN LAFORTE

5 months ago

IPVM Administrator

This is in the basement of the Baltimore command

center:

It's a good question. Carlton and I talked about this

before publishing. The cause was not revealed.
Carlton can try checking, but Vidsys is long on

marketing and short on real explanations.

Christian Laforte

IN

REPLY TO JOHN

HONOVICH

5 months ago

Thinking about it, there could be plenty of valid

reasons to use a man-in-the-loop approach to
authorize video transmission from one agency to
another. Legal restrictions, minimizing upload
bandwidth, preventing unauthorized information leak,
etc. My bet would be on security personnel that
routinely watch the public, but are afraid of being
watched by other departments and being held
responsible if something goes wrong. That kind of
double-standard is almost the norm, and it's holding
back a lot of potential cost savings and
improvements in operational eciency.
We are just nishing one interesting safe-city project
that isn't held back by this kind of organizational
fear, involving 6 agencies that want to share cameras
and analytics. We had to extend a lot of our
permission features, e.g. to support complex new
rules to automatically grant temporary permissions
to some cameras based on opened alarm type,
escalation, location, etc. Some agencies have policies
that restrict archive vs live feed sharing. Fun stu.

Carlton Purvis

IN

REPLY TO JOHN

HONOVICH

5 months ago

IPVM Administrator

Yep, I'll see if I can nd out.

Carlton Purvis

about 1 month ago

IPVM Administrator

Baltimore in the past said the operating cost for this

system was $1.4 million annually and is now
requesting an additional $700,000. The city also
increased it maintenance contract to $8.2 million to
account for "platform integration and a limited
expansion of the system." All this after a review
found the system had severe deciencies.