Creating a connected community with public safety technology

An important requirement to ensure the growth and viability of a city is safety. When people feel safe, they are more likely to work and do business, which helps the economy grow.

Low crime rates and effective disaster management allow a city to become more stable, creating a good environment for business and tourism. A safe city also attracts talented individuals, contributing to economic development through innovation and expertise. However, as cities grow, challenges arise.

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Current challenges faced by public safety agencies

Inefficient collaboration between departments, or between public and private sectors, is one of the biggest challenges faced by public safety agencies today. A lack of coordination can limit effective responses to events like crime and natural disasters, impacting public confidence and the overall well-being of cities and organizations.

Public agencies are stretched thin and need more efficient ways to handle events and emergencies in their cities. With dense populations, extensive surveillance networks, and growing responsibilities, public safety agencies worldwide face information overload.

Building stronger relationships between communities and law enforcement is crucial for enhancing public trust in law enforcement. The challenges of collecting video evidence, and considering costs and resource allocation, result in officers spending more time on administrative tasks rather than core policing duties.

To create safer communities, public safety agencies require unified and innovative solutions to ensure the well-being and safety of their communities.

How technology impacts public safety

Technology plays a crucial role in creating safer cities. It serves as a vital connection to help public safety agencies boost their capabilities and shift towards being proactive rather than reactive. This proactive approach means security teams can anticipate certain types of threats and quickly respond to citizens’ calls during emergencies.

In their day-to-day, public safety and security teams deal with an overload of data that can’t be efficiently managed without the right tools. An excess of video evidence presents challenges in collecting, analyzing, and securely storing data for investigators. Many are looking for adaptable solutions, recognizing a one-size-fits-all approach may not suit each city's unique needs.

Introducing Community Connect

Community Connect™ is a community safety initiative offered by Genetec that improves urban safety through public and private collaboration. By connecting law enforcement, educational institutions, and local businesses through a unified platform, cities can address security concerns comprehensively. Using technology that reinforces community-led public safety, the initiative empowers community members to participate in keeping their neighborhoods safe.

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Here’s how different groups benefit from Community Connect:

Mayors: Boosting revenue through enhanced security

Mayors have a big impact on their city’s prosperity. Community Connect provides an opportunity to increase revenue by enhancing neighborhood security through community-led policing. By adopting a unified security approach, mayors can support businesses, residents, and visitors, creating a secure environment that stimulates economic growth.

The use of smart and connected technologies creates a safer city in the long run, ensuring the initial investment can be used as systems grow.

Police: Amplifying policing capabilities

For police, the primary goal is to enhance public safety and rebuild community trust. Community Connect facilitates this by allowing police departments to add more cameras strategically. This increased surveillance not only deters crime but also provides valuable data for investigations. The system's advanced capabilities allows officers to focus on core policing duties, making their jobs more effective.

Public sector: Versatility and effective security

Community Connect stands out for its versatility and efficiency in sectors such as education, banking, retail, traffic departments, public works, and transit agencies.

City stakeholders can join Community Connect through Genetec Federation™ , which allows them to consolidate live monitoring, video searches, alarm management, and health reporting from numerous independent sites. In a federated city, police officers, firefighters, emergency medical services, city managers, enterprise executives, BIDs, and community leaders collaborate for a common purpose in urban security.

Community partners with their own surveillance systems can also share their video through a gateway appliance. If they don’t want to share their live video feed, they can share video footage as needed by uploading it on a secure web platform connected to law enforcement agencies. 

How Community Connect improves collaboration and simplifies investigations

Video is crucial for investigations, but getting footage from nearby cameras manually is time-consuming. Genetec Clearance™ helps you launch your camera registration program and improves collaboration with partners in your community. Businesses and residents can join public safety programs, making their camera information available for nearby investigations. And investigators can access recordings without physical copies, saving time for more important tasks.

Without a camera registry program, police officers must travel to each location to collect video evidence stored on memory cards or hard drives, adding complexity and time. The camera registry integration digitizes this process, making evidence collection more efficient and eliminating the need for physical retrieval.

Unlike traditional systems, the integration of a camera registry module within Clearance creates a truly connected and convenient security system. By partnering with organizations within your community, you get access to more evidence sources without the need to install additional hardware of your own.

Why a unified security platform makes all the difference

Community Connect and Clearance allow public safety agencies to improve their operations within a unified platform.

Bringing all your digital evidence sources together into one centralized location makes it easier to review files and documents. It becomes your single repository for each piece of evidence related to a case, including recordings sent from the public.

It's built to unify all of your data so that you can manage security policies, monitor events, and run investigations. Its extensive ecosystem lets you expand your system with new technology such as automatic license plate recognition, IIoT sensors, and drones, to face emerging threats. And since it’s not focused on one narrow set of tasks, it can accommodate new data types all within one interface.