New Jersey public-safety LTE assets help Atlantic City use video to secure events

Indeed, Atlantic City police would reduce the resolution of the video significantly and the frame rate to as little as 8 frames per second in an effort to lower the bandwidth demands on the commercial system, but these measures still were not enough to ensure reliable connectivity.

“It would still crash and freeze,” Sarkos said. “No matter what we would do, it couldn’t maintain it [connectivity backhauling video to the command center].

“Now, those cameras still recorded, so there was a benefit, because we could always go back to the video, if something happened. We just couldn’t monitor them live [before].”

But that was not a problem this year, as Atlantic City police transmitted the video over the JerseyNet system that provides dedicated access to public safety, instead of contending with attendees for scarce bandwidth over a commercial network. From the command center, officials were able to remotely control the pan, tilt and zoom capabilities of the cameras while viewing 720p high-definition video at 30 frames per second, Sarkos said.

“We have [public-safety LTE] routers installed in our camera trailers and also in our command post,” Sarkos said. “We established connectivity with the pole-camera trailers without a problem—it stayed up before the event, it stayed up during the event, and it stayed up after the event.

“It worked great. We weren’t affected by the massive crowds that arrived.”

Mazur said that having elevated video assets at large events is important, because they provide a perspective that officers on the ground cannot provide. Not only does the video help those in the command center deploy public-safety resources to an incident that may occur, it often can be used to identify locations where a law-enforcement presence can diffuse a potentially volatile situation before it escalates.

“When you have these large outdoor events, video assets are absolutely critical—not only as force multiplier but being able to deploy what we call reaction teams to specific areas for emergencies,” Mazur said.

JerseyNet is an early-builder project approved by FirstNet that utilizes only deployable LTE trailers—most of which are in fixed locations—and is funded primarily with federal grants from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). Like other BTOP projects, JerseyNet must be completed by Sept. 30.

In addition to the beach concerts and Miss America events, the JerseyNet system was used to support video at last week’s Atlantic City Air Show. Some of the system assets will be used to provide security communications support when Pope Francis visits the United States later this month, according to Fred Scalera, public safety broadband manager for the state of New Jersey.

During the recent APCO 2015 show in Washington, D.C., a JerseyNet LTE trailer was displayed with technology solutions from Mutualink, Hughes and Oceus Networks.