NY School Deploys HD CCTV Surveillance System

  • 06/12/07

With the mission of preparing at-risk children to live safely within their home communities again, nothing is more important to The Berkshire Farm Center in Canaan, New York, than the round-the-clock security of its residential students. So when it came time to upgrade its aging CCTV video surveillance system, the decision to move to a network-based, high-definition system was easy.

Berkshire Farm has just completed the installation of a high-definition digital video surveillance system from CoVi Technologies. The CoVi Crystal HD system is the first phase of a large deployment of cameras installed throughout the campus that capture and record video in high-definition--up to 12 times greater resolution quality than traditional analog video. While video surveillance systems are common at residential facilities for at-risk youth, this is the first HD system ever deployed in this type of facility. It allows school administrators to easily retrieve and review surveillance video without requiring additional network bandwidth capabilities.

"Working with more than 200 at-risk kids and their families annually, at the Residential Treatment Center, creates a very real security issue that is fundamental to the success of our programs," said Harith Flagg, Berkshire Farm CEO "The CoVi HD system provides a level of video quality that fundamentally changes the nature of video surveillance, allowing us to dramatically increase the detail of student and faculty incidents, dramatically improving our response time, and allowing us to reduce investigation time. This allows us to continue to devote resources to our core function of helping children in need. In addition, the high-quality of recorded video makes this a valuable training tool for our staff. Real video examples of past incidents can be used to help train staff how to handle future situations."

In September 2006, Berkshire deployed a complete CoVi Crystal HD system including the HD cameras, each with a Distributed Media Manager to record and store video at the "edge" of the school's existing IP network. In all, the solution monitors 17 buildings across the campus and is "fail-safe"-- if the school's network were to go down, the CoVi system will continue to operate.

"We are pleased to work with a storied institution like Berkshire Farm to help them enhance the safety of their students and faculty," said Barry Walker, president and CEO of CoVi Technologies. "Berkshire's installation of the Crystal HD system underscores the benefits of integrating traditional video surveillance with IP networks.  Because of the system's distributed architecture and intelligent management software, Crystal HD provides the ultimate in video quality and reliability, giving Berkshire's security staff the highest degree of confidence that their students and campus are secure."

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