Georgia Tech is upgrading security efforts with a new operations center designed to provide round-the-clock monitoring of the campus and better protection for its more than 21,000 students.
The center, in the police department’s headquarters, has a monitoring system featuring live video feeds from 16 cameras monitored by six students working part-time. The cameras are at campus entry and access points, high pedestrian areas and places that crime data show warrant extra monitoring.
The operations center came online in January and combines the work of dispatchers with the monitoring to provide campus police officers better information about areas they cannot see or constantly patrol. The cameras — including nine more coming online in a few months — can provide wide aerial views of campus and city streets and can home in closely enough to read vehicle license tags.
“We’re integrating calls with coverage,” said interim Georgia Tech Police Chief Robert Connolly. “We’re using the cameras to make our response more progressive. The technology is constantly evolving and we’re evolving with it.”
University officials say the cameras and operations center are already making a difference.
A camera sending a feed to the operations center caught a non-student on campus inappropriately touching a female student. Operations center technicians were able to zoom in on the man and provide a close-up image for police, who arrested the man on Georgia State’s campus.
In another incident, Atlanta police chased a robbery suspect onto Georgia Tech’s campus. Operations center cameras helped police follow the suspect and locate his hiding place in a trash dumpster.
In addition to adding cameras, officials plan on interfacing the university’s cameras with the City of Atlanta police department.
“People think of police as only patrol officers, but police do a lot more than I expected,” said Jeremy Tallant, a former U.S. Navy air traffic controller. Tallant, a student worker, is the lead technical assistant of the operations center. “My main function is to patrol campus and look at things that may compromise the safety of students.”
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