Takoma Park, Maryland

Founded in 1883, Takoma Park is a suburb in Montgomery County, Maryland that provides municipal services to 17,000 residents across 2.4 square miles, with departments that include Administration, Housing and Community Development, Library, Police, Public Works, and Recreation.

Lars DeSalvio, Director of Information Technology (IT), comes from a background of providing full-service IT support for small deployment environments with limited staff and budget. “That’s what attracted me to the City of Takoma Park, where I inherited a small department and technology that included an outdated security camera system.”

Challenges

1. Time-consuming searches for video recordings

2. Difficulty resolving incidents due to poor video quality

3. Support of unreliable equipment that was constantly failing

“It was time-consuming to retrieve incident footage, especially when we didn’t have much information to go on. We were having to watch through low-quality videos, barely able to make out people and faces. It was inefficient and, with a small staff, pretty much impossible to get anything accomplished in a short period of time.”

The legacy system consisted of disparate analog and IP cameras connected to three digital video recorders (DVRs). If any part of the system experienced downtime, DeSalvio and his team would have to pinpoint which DVR had to be restarted. “It was just a nightmare trying to manage that.” Retrieving incident footage could take 2-3 days between locating the incident and sharing it with the proper authorities

Why Verkada?

1. Fast footage retrieval with intelligent search features

2. Easy-to-use, intuitive user interface

3. Centralized video management and live link sharing

4. Hybrid cloud-based system with no on-site NVR

DeSalvio has streamlined and simplified multi-site management with Verkada’s video security solution, which includes access to the Command software platform and automatic updates.

“I didn’t want to have to restart the DVRs anymore or deal with firmware updates. I wanted a system that I could control centrally, see what was happening at all times, and be immediately notified of any system downtime.”

Fast footage retrieval with intelligent search features

“Before we would have to go through videos and manually look for the incidents. Now we use Motion Grid Search, highlight an area, and immediately find what we need. Some searches that would’ve taken 2-3 days now take 10-15 minutes, it’s been a huge change for the city.”

Easy-to-use, intuitive user interface

“We use Heatmaps to check where people congregate. For overnight building security, I can immediately see if anyone has been on-site and find out if they were up to anything.”

Centralized video management and live link sharing

“From Command, we can identify the information that we need, share videos through a link, and archive footage to unlimited cloud storage. Having everything in one centralized platform has been a huge time-savings.”

Hybrid cloud-based system with no on-site NVR

“If there’s an extended power outage, the camera will continue to record and store video data on board. We also set up proactive alerts so we’re immediately notified if they go down; with the old system, we wouldn’t know if the camera was offline unless somebody told us.”

Looking Ahead: Expanding Deployment

With Verkada, DeSalvio has reduced incident resolution time from days to minutes and bolstered physical security across the whole city. He currently has Verkada cameras deployed across four properties: two Recreation Centers, the Public Works facility, and the Community Center which includes the Police Department, Library, and City offices. He is seeking to expand coverage to at least one more property in the near future.

To try Verkada at your organization, request a free trial camera or attend our weekly webinar.