Cook County Sheriff's vehicle outfitted with new equipment linked to region-wide Homeland Security wireless network system.
"No one else has this system," said Daniel J. Coughlin, executive director of the Cook County Judicial Advisory Council. "This is a secure, wireless interoperable communications system that has been extensively tested and is now operational in Cook County in 27 municipalities, with plans to extend the system throughout the region."
The system, which is supported by funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), provides real-time video feeds from any place in the county -- or beyond -- with access to the network, and can be utilized by mobile platforms that include patrol cars, helicopters and even authorized ipods and pda's.
"Users can utilize cameras on a street corner that monitor for criminal activity, or cameras focused on a highly sensitive secured environment like a chemical plant, or on a helicopter used to view a fire and feed another visual perspective back to a command vehicle on the ground," says Coughlin. "The technology provides for a vast variety of uses. For example, you could transmit video and other data directly from a patrol car responding to a chemical or biological incident directly to the Centers for Disease Control."
The patrol-car based system on display at the NACo conference consists of a two-camera array, a vehicle-based computer and monitor, a microphone attached to the first responder, and compact equipment in the trunk that provides the backbone of the system -- wireless broadcasting and receiving of the data stream across a fast, secure, highly robust network. The system is built to be expandable, so that additional types of data -- from GIS information to air quality testing -- can be folded into the data stream. The DHS has covered the costs to outfit vehicles in the system, at a cost of between $35,000 and $40,000 per vehicle.
