From the Editor

Welcome to Video Scene Magazine

Video catches criminal acts everyday. One recent example, told to us by a Detective...The victim said he was cashing a check at the gas station. According to his story, soon after he left he was robbed at gunpoint. He indicated the two that robbed him were watching him in the gas station. We recovered the video from the station, isolated the two suspects and put a picture from the video on the news. Within a couple days, by way of tips, we had one suspect identified _ warrants signed _ and for the other suspect we had a nickname. While sitting on an area frequented by the identified suspect, we saw both suspects, wearing the same coats as in the video. After a short foot chase they were apprehended and both were later indicted for Aggravated Robbery.

Real stories like this are happening all over our nation and the world. Video is becoming the new way to catch criminals, and there is a lot of it out there. More and more video surveillance systems are set up everyday. But where does that video go? That video surveillance is now turning into video evidence and being leveraged to secure facilities and businesses, catch criminals and protect our homeland.

Much video is being used to do just that, but, sadly, some does go unused. It may be that a police department doesn’t have the proper tools. Or that a security office doesn’t know there is readily accessible (and sometimes free) software available to do some simple processing of the video. The time has come to educate the community of people who want to utilize video as a tool for law enforcement. With more knowledge, you’ll see that it’s not a gargantuan task to succeed at this with little in the way of a learning curve.

Experts agree and disagree as they do. Best practices are debated and refined. That’s natural and healthy, and we encourage that. Our purpose is to let you know what is going on out there. How are people helping their communities with video? Video Scene is our way of sharing knowledge. We hope you enjoy it in the years to come.