ANDERSON, SC - The City of Anderson Police Department needs your help in catching criminals who prey on businesses. If you have a video surveillance system, the police department has provided tips for maximizing the benefits of having surveillance cameras.

Surveillance Cameras

• Locate a camera at the exit doorframe approx. 5 ft from the floor. Ceiling mounted cameras tend to give small, out of focus images of the top of the suspect’s head (or cap). A camera mounted at the doorframe will give a clear full-face view of the suspect.
• Do not locate cameras so that they point towards a window. This will cause the background light to obscure interior images during the daylight hours.
• Clean camera covers and/or lenses often. Dust and/or grease floating in the air are attracted to the electromagnetic field produced by the camera. As it collects on the lens or cover the image becomes a little worse each day until it is useless.
• Leave some lights on when the business is closed. An unlit view of someone burglarizing your business is no better than leaving the video surveillance system off.
• If possible, have a fake camera system set up where the suspect may be able to see it.

Videotape System

• If a suspect ever robs your store and asks for the video surveillance, give him the fake tape. Store the real video equipment in a locked room where a robber would not see it or have access to it in a robbery.
• Have a regular schedule for replacing tapes. Each time that a tape is run through a VCR, the quality of the image is degraded. The more often a tape has been used, the worse the image that we have to work with. Consider replacing the tape after 30 uses or less.
• Have the VCR record heads cleaned regularly.

Digital Recording System

• Each time a tape is run through your VCR, a little bit of the tape is rubbed off onto the record head. This will decrease the quality of the image recorded.
• Store the fewest days that you think that you can at the highest quality setting.
• A digital storage system compresses the images to save hard drive space. This causes approximately 30% loss of resolution. The played back images are not NEARLY as clear as the live views. By storing fewer days at the highest resolution setting you are optimizing your available storage space.
• Purchase the largest hard drive that you can afford in your system. More storage allows more days of higher resolution images to be stored.