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PRESS RELEASE
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:  Pam Hoover
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Former chief of police talks about the need for technology in public safety
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CHICAGO, June 30, 2008 -Gone are the days where technology is used primarily for gaming or viewed as a visionary ‘Jetson’s’-type world. Technology is at the forefront of public safety, bridging the communication gap, helping to decrease response times, and increase service efficiency.

Bob Stanberry is a former chief of police with 14 years of law enforcement experience. Not only does Stanberry understand the industry, but he understands how technology can impact law enforcement. Stanberry started a digital video surveillance company in 1998 when the idea of digital video was still in its infancy. Currently, Stanberry works for Cisco as their Public Safety Business Development Manager.

At a recent public safety and technology conference in Chicago, hosted by Maron Structure Technologies and Cisco, Stanberry related his 14 years of law enforcement experience and talked about the need for technology in public safety.

Stanberry said his reason for getting involved with the physical security aspect was the poor quality of analog video. He talked about one specific case in which a store owner was the victim of a gang related robbery and homicide. The store owner had several analog cameras up and running within the store, but the imagery was so poor in quality that the police couldn’t get a conviction without the help of other evidence.

Stanberry identified the six main drivers of public safety: improved response times, reduced downtime, improved clearance rates, improved responder and citizen safety, liability reduction, and community partnership. Perhaps the biggest movement in public sector is the transition to an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Because everything runs on the IP network, different departments are in a better position to collaborate and facilitate teamwork.

“Communications is very ‘siloed’ [in most municipalities], your communications are in one area, your access control is in another, video surveillance is in another, and your business applications are yet in another,” said Stanberry. “Very rarely are these really linking up all that well together. What we’re doing . . . is actually going across all those different silo lines and bringing it all together and putting it on one network to make it run more efficiently.”

With technology available today, public safety agencies can remove themselves from the traditional siloed approach. Collaborative applications deliver the right information to the right person, at the right time.

“In my case at the Lansing police department, the state police were also in town. If they’d make a traffic stop, literally they’d call their central dispatch at the state, which was literally two buildings over from our central dispatch,” explained Stanberry. “Their central dispatch would get on the telephone to call my central dispatch. Then my central dispatch would then dispatch us so we could try to figure out where they were at.”

As an integral component of the conference, attendees demoed the technology to see how this technology could positively impact public safety. Attendees saw how interoperable communications can patch together radio frequencies, a cell phone, a landline, and a push to talk at the same time, on the same line– eliminating the need to make several individual calls. Additional solutions included mobile access routers for mobility in the field, video surveillance, mesh wireless, and digital media signage.

Attendees of this discussion varied across a broad spectrum of the public sector ranging from a superintendent to police chief. The conference helped attendees put together the pieces of their own blueprint for public safety.

For information on future conferences, please contact Pam Hoover at phoover@structure-tech.com.

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