U.S. police install Motorola Digital Video Cameras in patrol cars

It has been said that ”pictures don’t lie.” Police agencies in five U.S. municipalities are planning to use that to their advantage with the installation of their new Mobile Video Enforcer (MVE) digital camera systems from Motorola, Inc.

Following the first implementation of Motorola’s MVE system this spring in Wilmington, North Carolina, municipal police agencies in other states are now using this new tool to fight crime and protect their officers.

“Ultimately we are interested in the truth,” said Lt. David Holt, Toledo Police Dept., “and pictures can help us tell the truth. Our highest priority was getting a system that was as lifelike as possible. The Motorola MVE system offers great picture quality which is crucial when trying to demonstrate in court what happened at the scene of an incident.“

Previously, Toledo officers used a VHS system mounted in police vehicles. But according to Lt. Holt the quality was poor, the analog system broke down often and it was an administrative nightmare. “Officers had to physically take the videotape out of their vehicles and then it had to be cataloged and filed,” said Lt. Holt. “If we wanted to locate something on a tape, we had to search through the entire tape looking for the specific video we needed. It was time-consuming and not very efficient.”

The Mobile Video Enforcer consists of a Mobile Digital Video Recorder (MDVR) mounted in an officer’s vehicle and a Digital Video Management Solution (DVMS) located at the police department. The MDVR captures full-motion, DVD quality video that features pre-event and automatic event-triggered recording capabilities. Each video also stores incident and criminal profile information.

The DVMS automatically uploads, archives, and organizes captured video from the MDVR units. Video clips and still images can be retrieved within seconds from the database in a standard format for training or evidentiary purposes. Key video clips also can be exported to DVD and played back on commercially available DVD players for court cases and evidentiary analysis purposes.