Radius Security and Vancouver Fire is British Columbia’s largest, longest-established fire protection, fire safety and commercial security and monitoring company servicing municipalities in B.C., Alberta and Ontario. The company has been in business since 1948 and does everything from security and fire installations, to inspections and safety training, and end-to-end surveillance monitoring. 

Recently the company sought out a solution to address a challenge common to the security and surveillance industry in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere: There are simply far too many false alarms and too few police officers to respond in a timely fashion. Police departments need actionable intelligence to make proper judgement calls to determine when and where their officers should be dispatched on a priority basis.  

After a thorough search for a solution in the marketplace, Radius Security found the best option for its surveillance automation platform — a two-fold solution including SureView Systems’ Immix CS platform and IncidentCode.com from Police Priority. 

With its vast integration library that allows dispatch operators to work with many different video systems in one easy-to-use interface, SureView’s Immix CS product was the logical choice as the right software automation platform to monitor multiple video systems, both current and future, while offering the right service package allowing for real-time video intelligence that would meet the company’s needs in expanding their commercial offerings.

The second piece of the puzzle was the IncidentCode.com Cooperative Alarm Sharing Transmission (CAST) technology — a cloud-based solution that delivers real-time video clips sent to the monitoring center through Immix directly to the police department without requiring a traditional login user name and password solution. All the PSAP and responding officer needs is an Internet connection and PC or mobile device. Police Priority appeared to be a simple, yet elegant solution that police departments could easily embrace.

“Radius has been using the combined Immix/CAST system for a year and sees it as an integral part of our collaboration with law enforcement to maintain our high apprehension rates, which are on average at 54 percent,” says Don Azcona,  operations manager for Vancouver Fire & Radius Security.

Once the solution was decided upon and implemented, Radius Security travelled to the different PSAPs they monitored to educate them on Police Priority’s IncidentCode.com CAST technology and how it can greatly differentiate its alarm data from other traditional alarms or surveillance providers by delivering real-time, 10-second video clips with each crime-in-progress event. Because the solution is 100 percent web-based, this video data is visible not only to the dispatcher, but to actual responding officers in the field via smartphone or other mobile devices.

This provides the actionable intelligence that local PSAPs were seeking to help them better allocate their officers. It also allows for a safer, more effective and accurate response procedure to each event, as officers can gain valuable data that can improve the overall response.

“Whenever we demonstrate the system to police chiefs or PSAP personnel, they like its simplicity,” Azcona adds. “Now that we have shown some success, and word of mouth is out, we feel confident more and more PSAPs will jump on board.” 

The solution saves the PSAP centers money as well as resources and time needed to maintain those systems. The ability for officers to receive visual evidence of crimes and suspects has improved not only response times, but the effectiveness of each response as more information is on hand to make the most informed decision and properly allocate resources. This service is being delivered by Radius to municipalities across Canada today, and the capability exists to deliver it to 97 percent of law enforcement entities today via the Immix/CAST paired solution. This fact, coupled with the quick success rate seen thus far, should go a long way in changing police dispatch policies across North America.

“We truly feel like we can eventually change policy here in Canada to actually require the usage of this technology in all PSAPs and we think we are getting close to achieving that,” Azcona says. “The coupling of Immix, and their vast video integration library and interface, and Police Priority’s actionable intelligence, make for a truly easy-to-deploy solution nationwide.”