VCU, which supports more than 28,000 students and nearly 16,000 staff, is the nation's first university to install Mobile Video Enforcer (MVE) digital camera systems from Motorola. The MVE system has been installed in six of the university's police vehicles and records what is going on inside and outside of the vehicle.
VCU's 160-plus buildings are separated between two campuses that are 1.5 miles apart and are integrated into the heart of downtown Richmond, "so it's hard to tell where the university ends and the city begins," said Willie Fuller, VCU Police Department chief and president of the Virginia Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (VACLEA). "There are a lot of transient people and vehicle traffic going through the campus. Putting digital video cameras in our vehicles gives us another tool to monitor and capture what is going on in our campus community."
Prior to installing Motorola's MVE system, VCU did not use any kind of recording device in its police vehicles.
The Mobile Video Enforcer consists of a mobile digital video recorder (MDVR) mounted in an officer's vehicle and a digital video management solution (DVMS) located at the police department. The MDVR captures full-motion, DVD quality video that features pre-event and automatic event-triggered recording capabilities. Each video also stores incident and criminal profile information.
The DVMS automatically uploads, archives, and organizes captured video from the MDVR units. Video clips and still images can be retrieved within seconds from the database in a standard format for training or evidentiary purposes. Key video clips also can be exported to DVD and played back on commercially available DVD players for court cases and evidentiary analysis purposes.
Within the first week of using MVE, Chief Fuller says the system already was pointing out things that needed to be addressed. "They were little things that officers didn't realize they were getting a little lax with, such as where to position their car during a traffic stop, and how to approach a vehicle and talk to a driver," said Chief Fuller. "Now, we are using the video to reinforce safety methods and enhancing protocol to help better protect our officers and our citizens."
Other Motorola tools VCU has added to its police force are the MW800, which is a fixed computer, and the ML850, a rugged, portable laptop computer. The in-vehicle computers have been installed in some of its patrol and detective vehicles and enable them to do background checks and look up information from the vehicle anywhere, anytime.
