GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- There's been a lot of public discussion and media reports this week about the Kent County Sheriff's Office's new program called "Connect Kent County."
The program branches off from a school radio project the KCSO conducted. It placed a police radio in 326 school buildings around the county.
"We determined that the next evolution of school safety would be to tie in their video feeds to our 911 center," Roon told WOOD Radio in a telephone interview.
"It just so happens that the technology that we use to pull in video streams of schools for emergency response only is the same technology that we can use to share video feeds with the communities," he said.
The KCSO said the software used does not require anyone to purchase anything new. It communicates with other systems.
The program allows law enforcement to access real-time surveillance footage from participating businesses and schools.
Capt. Roon said it is a myth that the KCSO will be accessing residential cameras.
"This is for commercial use, only. Residents will be to register their cameras with the program by jumping on a website and essentially just raising their hand and saying, 'Hey, I have a camera. I'm willing to check it in the event a crime occurs in my neighborhood.' But we, the Sheriff's Office, will not have any access to residential cameras. All we will be able to do is send a message to those who have registered their cameras, and they can send us video clips of interest, as needed," Roon said.
On the commercial business side, the Sheriff's Office is asking for exterior cameras only to be used, unless special circumstances arise.
Public streets and parking lots are a couple things the KCSO might pull in from a video stream.
"If a crime occurs in that area, we would be able to jump into those streams to potentially gain evidence and leads in an investigation," Roon said.
Jumping into the video streams in real time while an incident is occurring only changes when the police have access to the streams. KCSO already does a lot of canvassing work and manual video uploading that is done by going door to door.
"It's done after the fact and with the consent of the owner," Roon said. "This really just takes that process and makes it much more streamlined and in real time. And we can do it remotely."
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