Authorities are looking to keep a better eye on prisoners, with City Council expected to purchase a digital storage system for the video captured by cameras installed in the jail of the Public Safety Facility.
The cameras, which document staff and inmate interaction, are located throughout the Public Safety Facility. At present, the recordings are kept on an analog time-lapse video cassette recording system. The older system has been deemed unreliable, and a new digital system should be an effective replacement for the analog cassettes, according to a city staff report.
The digital storage system, which will cost $249,435, including tax and three years of maintenance, uses high-capacity digital storage technology to store the footage and also offers a higher level of reliability and performance than analog systems. Additionally, the newer systems are easier to manage, take up less physical storage space, enable shared access for better security, and allow for faster reproduction for response, the report stated.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 26, 2006. Read the original PDF.