Downtown Hays has witnessed an increase in theft and vandalism.  The Hays police department wished to explore a video security solution to investigate the reported incidents. They required a system that could correlate a time to the incident and have the capability to allow an officer to decipher a face or license plate. GTX Technologies researched the equipment and locations to develop a system that would fit the needs of the Hays police department and the downtown business owners. 

          The first step of the data gathering process was to talk to the main source of interest, Jim Braun, head of the Hays police department. He explained to us that the camera needed to be able to provide enough quality to identify the person in the act. The next concern was, “Who was going to take care of this system?” The person maintaining the system would be Chad Ruder, who was also at this meeting. Chad’s concerns were not having enough time to maintain the system along with how to route all the information back to a central point/server.

            After meeting with Jim, he suggested that we speak with Toby Dougherty, the City of Hays Assistant City Manager. Toby provided us with valuable information when submitting a proposal to be brought before the city commission.  He also asked us some in-depth questions dealing mainly with cost.  For example, “What are the benefits of a system like this, and do those benefits out-weigh the costs?” He also pointed out the possibility of an AT&T grant and explained to us that the City of Hays has gotten a number of grants for different types of technology projects.

            Our most useful meeting was provided by Sabrina William. Sabrina holds a meeting with downtown businesses in Hays every other Tuesday, as part of the Hays Downtown Development Program. Various downtown business owners meet to discuss how business faired for the week and possible ways to improve the downtown community. At first, the business owners were worried about the cost of the system. Once we explained to them that we were looking at outside funding sources, they started warming up to the idea. The owners gave input on the different problems that they faced with vandalism and theft. There have been a great number of reports from year to year that never get solved, so the businesses almost stop reporting most of the minor incidents. They also stressed the idea of “Big Brother,” which was one of our concerns as well.  We felt our solution would not be manned until there was an incident reported to the authorities, reducing the “Big Brother” concerns.

            Our next step was to determine the best locations for the cameras.  In order to accomplish this task, we conducted several site-surveys. Our surveys entailed taking pictures at the locations in the downtown area.  The pictures documented the area the cameras would cover and the camera mounting locations.  Along with determining locations and positioning, we had other items to consider: power, distance, and line-of-sight. We documented where we going to place the cameras in Google Earth (see image below) to present the information to the vendor that is going to bid out the camera system and installation.

            To help justify the expense of the camera we contacted the Police Department and requested criminal incident records from the previous four years. After organizing and documenting the data, so that it was useful, we found out the following information.