With illegal activity in places such as George Washington Park in Centralia seemingly on the rise, the Centralia City Council earlier this year approved the purchase of a mobile surveillance trailer to aid the Centralia Police Department as an additional crime deterrent.
The system has been delivered, and Centralia Police Chief Stacy Denham demonstrated its cameras during the Centralia City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 10, while it was parked in front of Centralia City Hall.
While parked outside, the system was already at work. Several images it captured were shown to the council. Denham and his staff are currently testing the system with its supplier to ensure it works properly.
Built by Vorp Energy, the surveillance trailer is solar powered and self-sufficient, Denham said. Its battery charge remains enough to last even during the winter when it isn’t sunny.
The trailer features multiple cameras with thermal imaging capabilities, along with proximity sensors and alarms.
“You can’t approach it from any angle without actually tripping the sensors and kicking on the camera system,” Denham said. “It only records when something enters the sensors.”
He said the alarm system is meant to act as the first crime deterrent and ensure people know they are on camera.
Additionally, all officers within the Centralia Police Department will have an app on their phones linked to the system, which will alert them when sensors are triggered and will give them a live camera feed of what’s occurring.
There is also a speaker system, allowing officers to directly interact with whoever triggered the system’s sensors.
“Say it’s in a park, he can say ‘the park is closed, leave immediately or you can be arrested for trespassing,’” Denham said.
Denham’s hope is that the surveillance system will deter crime and lead to fewer arrests for his understaffed department.
“Preventing (crime) is far better,” Denham added.
The system will be moved around the city to different locations, but will start out and be tested at George Washington Park in downtown Centralia. Should the system prove successful, Denham said he will ask to purchase more.
“One of the municipalities we talked to, they have a whole bunch of these units, and they actually have a person who’s assigned to move these things around and keep track of them,” Denham said. “They have watched their crime rate drop.”
As for the cameras’ recordings, each camera has its own individual 120-gigabyte hard drive. Recordings are automatically deleted when the hard drive fills up. Each hard drive has 60 gigabytes devoted to videos and 60 reserved for photos.
If a crime is committed directly within the camera’s view, the police can save the video or picture as evidence, but Denham said because of the deterrent factor, most data is simply left on the hard drives until it is overwritten by new recordings and images.
Any recordings or photos will fall under the same public record statutes as any other evidence collected by police and will be subject to redaction should a records request come in.
Denham added he is happy to answer any questions Centralia citizens concerned about surveillance may have.
“This is, unfortunately, a sad reality in our current world, where we have to step up our game in order to curtail crime,” Denham said.
The city council allocated $35,000 for the camera in a meeting July 25.
Vorp Energy is an Idaho-based company that produces a variety of mobile solar-powered surveillance systems. For more information, visit https://www.vorpenergy.com/ or contact the Centralia Police Department at 360-330-7680.
