Cameras secure CSULB

Surrounded by a semi-circle of computer screens, a University Police dispatcher monitors campus life with a set of 37 cameras scattered throughout Cal State Long Beach. 

With a joystick the dispatcher can turn the camera 360 degrees and zoom in with great clarity. From a camera perched atop the two-story Liberal Arts 1 building University Police can read the headline of a flier posted on the library’s glass doors.

The implementation of the camera system is partly a result of CSULB criminal activities.

In 2005 CSULB encountered 82 motor vehicle thefts, the second highest number of any university in the nation, according to Christina Esparza, Associated Students Inc. communications coordinator.

CSULB began plans for a camera system in early 2006 and ASI passed a resolution for the cameras that November.

“Having the second highest motor vehicle thefts in the whole nation, what kind of student organization would we be if we didn’t do anything about it,” Esparza said.

There was a delay in the installation, however, because the bidding process for the job first projected too high of prices, said CSULB President F. King Alexander.  Administration was able to bring the price down by about $800,000, which resulted in a cost of just over $1 million.

The million dollar price tag includes the installation of software, antennas and cabling for data transfer and other equipment needed to operate the system, said Mary Stephens, CSULB vice president for administration and finance.

The system’s last camera will be installed within this next week, said Stan Skipworth, University Police chief. 

No cameras were installed inside the parking structures since that would require an extreme number of cameras due to the many walls inside, Stephens said.  Though parking structures do have cameras monitoring their entrances and exits.

CSULB is the fourth CSU to have such a camera system, the others being San Francisco State, Los Angeles State and San Diego State, Alexander said.  It will not only help University Police to monitor the campus, but it will also serve as a deterrent to criminals and an encouragement to the CSULB community.

The cameras require a low amount of light to work but don’t have night vision, said Greg Pascal, University Police communications supervisor. They do convert to black and white when the light levels fall too low.

While admitting the cameras aren’t as powerful as, say, those for Google maps, Skipworth said they were “really quite exceptional.”

Dispatchers monitor the cameras in the University Police’s communications center for 12 hours during the day’s key periods.

“If we could monitor them [cameras] around the clock we probably would,” Skipworth said.

University Police has currently eliminated the cameras ability to look into residential halls on campus or surrounding housing areas. Windows of the residential halls have a medium gray force-shield looking block over them, and the dispatcher’s computer screen goes completely black when he turns the camera into the direction of housing areas.  The cameras don’t record what goes on behind those blocks.

Skipworth said to override the blocks would require a validation process involving himself, Pascal and a couple of other officers.

Random audits of the cameras’ recorded material will also be done to ensure they’re not being used improperly, Stephens said.

University Police also want to install video screens in patrol cars that would receive live video feeds from the cameras, Skipworth said.  The concept was Pascal’s idea and would be what he called “another tool in the officer’s toolbox.”

Currently that part of the system’s installation is only in the planning stages.

“People hoping to commit crime and do bad things on campus, I have found do not like the campus video programs or even the concept,” Alexander said.