With annual events in St. Joseph typically drawing in excess of 300,000 visitors a year, it is not uncommon at all for a child or an elderly person to be reported as missing, triggering a frantic search by families and friends. The old-fashioned solution of deploying multiple police officers to canvass an area on foot has traditionally taken several hours to resolve. St. Joseph City officials will take a step tonight to dramatically enhance recovery efforts while helping keep an eye on key locations in the city through expansion of their security camera system.
On the city’s Consent Agenda this evening is a plan to utilize $50,000 set aside in the capital improvement fund for the purchase of new security cameras for the Bluff Staircase leading down to the train station and Whirlpool Centennial Field and the parking lot adjacent to St. Joseph City Hall.
Deputy Public Safety Director Steven Neubecker says, “As a step in our ongoing program to upgrade security for the City of St. Joseph, its employees, citizens and patrons, we will be updating the security and surveillance system in our downtown district.” He adds, “The areas that we chose for the update pose special and unique concerns due to the sheer volume of people that frequently visit the area for routine commerce, leisure activities and special events.”
Neubecker says the security and surveillance system will be used to monitor and record incidents and events and help improve citizen safety, officer safety, and emergency responder’s resolution of critical incidents.
According to the Department of Public Safety, the data that is recorded by such cameras automatically transfers to a mass data storage device and remains available for investigative purposes, until state regulations say it must be destroyed.
Back to the incidence of missing persons, Neubecker says, “With the upgraded security surveillance system, we will be able to search several hours of video to find the last known location of a missing person and/or we can search in real time for the current location,” adding, “Both features work in a matter of seconds, and are based on used define criteria to produce specific results.”
Additionally, the upgraded system will aid in police investigations of criminal activity and vandalism, the likes of which had resulted in the loss of thousands of collars to the city and taxpayers due to damage of public and private property.
Cameras will also be installed to monitor Public Safety Headquarters, in the parking lot and the area where child custody exchanges take place.
Neubecker says the project is important for the department and the community and is “closely related to our Body Worn Camera Initiative and our Facility Security Initiative.” He adds, “Our goal is to enhance the safety of our community, improve emergency response to critical incidents, aid in the investigations or criminal activity and reduce liability for our organization.”
Presidio Networked Solutions Group of Caledonia, Michigan will provide and install the cameras and attendant software to dramatically enhance the department’s capabilities going forward. Their bid of $49,086.95 is on the consent agenda this evening, and Neubecker notes that staff applied for a Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority Avoidance Grant and last month were awarded $16,362.32 to cover a portion of the security camera project. It will reduce the cost to the community by a third.
Since the Consent Agenda includes multiple items all voted on in a single motion, unless this project or any other is singled out to be pulled from the approval process it will be passed in the early stages of tonight’s St. Joseph City Commission meeting, paving the way for the security enhancements soon.
The photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market is for illustration purposes only and is not intended to depict any of the actual devices that the City of St. Joseph will employ in their security enhancement plan.
