Motorola Launches 'Safe Schools,' Bundling Video, Data, Analytics and Voice
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 05/04/20
Motorola
Solutions has launched an integrated campus safety bundle that
combines video, data, analytics and voice. Safe
Schools
is intended to help school sites secure their campus perimeter,
control access to buildings and speed up communication with local law
enforcement.
The
technology provides for video security and analytics, license plate
recognition, anonymous tip submission and access control. According
to the company, the video analytics can help school personnel
identify suspicious activities and search video footage to locate
individuals based on physical descriptions and notify authorized
users with text-to-voice alerts and text messages to two-way radios
and broadband devices. School officials can share real-time alerts
and live video feeds with first responders as part of coordinating
incident response.
One
district that has already tried the new system is Perry
Township Schools,
near Indianapolis. The school system, which has its own police force,
worked with system integrator ERS
Wireless
to implement Safe Schools in two of its high schools. There, the
set-up included:
-
Video
security, access control and license plate recognition software from
Avigilon,
a Motorola company;
-
Mototrbo
Linked Capacity Plus network and Mototrbo digital radios;
-
Motorola's
APX
mission-critical radios and LEX
L11
LTE devices;
-
Ally
security incident management software;
-
CommandCentral
Aware,
situational awareness software, with video sharing with Indianapolis
Metropolitan Police Department; and
-
CommandCentral
Community
for public interactions.
"Safe
Schools gives us the ability to monitor all areas of our campus in
real-time, assess potential situations and respond to alerts in just
a few minutes," said Chris Sampson, associate superintendent, in
a statement. Heh added that the technology "can help create a
secure environment for our students, teachers and community members
as we look forward to having our students back with us in our Perry
Township schools."
As
Brian Knight, principal for Southport High Schools, noted, during
normal operations, "Our buildings have 19-20 exterior doors.
It’s not unusual to have multiple doors propped open. It’s
typically not nefarious, but it makes the building vulnerable."
"When
parents send their children back to school, they expect that their
child will be in a secure environment. However, because schools are a
place for the community and visitors to gather, securing them can be
a unique challenge," added John Zidar, Motorola senior vice
president. "Safe Schools is designed to help schools be more
proactive in their safety planning and provide visibility into
otherwise unknown threats, helping to ensure that students are safer
and personnel can focus on the job at hand."
Recently,
the company ran a virtual
showcase
demonstrating the Safe Schools ecosystem. Those presentations are
available now on-demand with registration.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.