Video Conferencing in Public Safety

Video Conferencing can be Adopted in So Many Industries

With video conferencing time and again proving its amazing worth and value to the global community, there’s no stopping its application and adoption in a variety of industries. We’ve heard about how video conferencing coupled with telepresence has revolutionized telemedicine and surgery, education and banking realms. Video conferencing is an important tool for entities in public safety as well, and can help to cut costs and improve security.

Whether it is in the army, the fire department, environmental protection offices or jurisdiction departments; for crisis education, trade missions or transportation, the role of video conferencing equipment in making things a whole lot easier cannot be downplayed.

Harris County Benefits from TANDBERG Video Conferencing

TANDBERG is one of the popular names in the video conferencing industry, providing high definition video conferencing, mobile video and telepresence solutions to a worldwide client base. Harris County at present makes use of TANDBERG solutions for employee meetings, distance learning, and video arraignment for felony dockets. A look at their story:

Harris County initially wanted video technology to help with distance learning, in their annual employee conference, and for the distribution of information. However, as soon as they started using the TANDBERG solution, they understood that it would also be very useful for video arraignment. The following are some of the ways Harris County benefited:

• Detainees no longer had to be moved from inmate processing centers the country over. Video is now brought to the housing facility and the judge can interact without the prisoners having to be moved.

• With video conferencing, potentially violent individuals needn’t be transferred from a secure environment to a non-secure one (courtroom) for the purpose of arraignment. They could be retained in the secure surroundings and the process would proceed successfully.

• Members of the prisoner’s family and others needn’t have to be in the courtroom or detention facility to watch the proceedings. This also rules out the necessity of a bailiff.

• Proceedings could be recorded to help an attorney or judge who needed a video record to ascertain things like whether the detainee admitted his guilt, whether a request was made for a public defender, and so on.

• The magistrate can save time as a pre-recorded video would let the detainees know what their rights are.

• Interactions between employees and people in other parts of the world were made possible; announcements were made available.

John Meadows, the Manager of Telecommunications Technical Services for Harris County spoke of two things which particularly impressed him about the TANDBERG solution: "First of all, it is simple to use; and secondly, the support they offer is awesome." The solution was also found to be dependable and cost-effective.

What’s Next?

We surely haven’t seen the last of the applications of video conferencing in public safety; at the pace at which technology is progressing, anything is possible.

Video Conferencing
Video Conferencing in Public Safety