Crime Prevention CounterAction - Crime Prevention for Businesses

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Video Surveillance & System Maintenance Tips for Businesses

Follow these tips to ensure your video surveillance system can do what it is intended to do: deter criminal behaviour and capture suspect images if a crime occurs in your business

Appoint two people to maintain the surveillance system.
Keep a record of maintenance and repairs in a separate record book.
Record the make/model/serial numbers of all system equipment, including cameras, multiplexer and VCRs. Keep this information readily available for police reporting, if required. This applies to both digital and video recording systems.
Review camera position setups to ensure optimum location and camera focus. An additional camera may be needed to capture fill-the-frame images of suspects as they enter premises or stand at counters. This is in addition to cameras that cover the whole scene with one camera only.
Camera focus should be adjusted clearly on the area most likely to capture a suspect image, such as a counter area. Hold a card with large numbers or writing at this counter to check the camera focus.
Ensure crucial areas have sufficient lighting to illuminate a suspect. Likewise, ensure light sources are not improperly aimed at the camera, or that a ceiling mounted camera is not too close to an adjacent ceiling light that will cause interference or white-out.
Back-lighting occurs in locations with sunlight streaming through windows directly into the camera. This causes the subject to appear as only a dark outline, obscuring any identifying detail. Follow the old film camera advice of, “Don't shoot into the sun!” and consider repositioning the camera, or installing light reducing window shades.
Don’t hang posters, banners, etc., so that they obstruct the camera’s view. Any line-of-sight of the camera should be kept unobstructed, if possible.
Monthly, clean camera lenses with approved lens cleaner fluid and paper. Put a few drops of cleaning fluid on the paper and wipe in a circular motion. Do not put fluid on the lens itself.
Monthly, clean the VCR recording heads using a high quality wet-tape cleaning cassette, which also cleans the entire tape path inside the VCR.
Annually, have the VCR serviced professionally. Purchase one additional VCR for backup in case of breakdowns or servicing.
Daily, ensure that the correct time & date is generated by the multiplex unit if installed, and most importantly, that the time & date is set on the recording VCR and displayed on the monitor. Brief power outages will require time and date to be reset. If your system has a multiplexer, you should see two separate time/date stamps. One is displayed by the multiplexer, and one is displayed by the VCR. The time and date stamp displayed by the “multiplexer”, on your monitor, will not be seen when viewed by forensic investigators on their equipment, and will hinder examinations if it is not available. Therefore, please ensure the VCR time/date is correctly set and displayed on the monitor. Make sure to correct for any time changes in the spring and fall due to daylight.
Purchase a large wall mounted clock and a large single numbered calendar, and position them so at least one camera clearly captures them in the background. The calendar should be the type that shows only one day at a time, similar to what's used in financial institutions.
Annually, purchase 40 new high quality videotapes. Label them 1 to 31, using them only on that day of the month. This allows the previous 30 days of videos to be available if investigators need to review incidents that may have occurred several days prior to being reported, such as fraud incidents. The extra nine tapes are for replacement purposes. This is based on 24-hour recording mode. Other recording modes require additional tapes to be purchased, however each tape should be used no more than 12-15 times for optimum recording. On the tape label, record each new date that the tape is used. This helps keep track of the total number of times the tape is used.
When an incident occurs, don't use the pause-jog-shuttle feature on the recording VCR to isolate and view the suspect’s image. This damages the image and hinders forensic analysis. If necessary for staff or police officers to view the recording, use the play/stop controls only.
If a crime occurs and the recorded videotape is ejected from the VCR, immediately break-out and remove the record-tab, which prevents accidental erasure of the evidence. Several surveillance VCR models automatically begin recording when a tape is inserted, and removing the record tab prevents accidentally recording over the evidence