Atlantic City Casinos, Police to Share Video and Radio Communications

Oct 17, 2011 by admin

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.–A new public-private partnership here will allow law enforcement, as well as other first responders, and the city’s 11 casinos to share real-time video surveillance feeds and radio communications during critical events.

The sharing will be provided by a new interoperability system, called Mutualink, which will be deployed within each casino and will give responding law enforcement and other public agencies access to surveillance feeds and allow all parties to communicate over disparate radio systems.

Put simply, the system “provides a good highway system to move information around very quickly to participating partners,” Tom Gilbert, commander of the Atlantic City Tourism District for the state Attorney General’s office, told Security Director News. “The quicker you move that information the better, the more timely that information is the better. If you can accomplish that with an information network such as this, you can achieve real-time sharing of information, and that really is the optimal goal.”

The system will not provide local or state law enforcement with 24/7 access to the casinos’ security cameras, but will allow easy access when necessary. The cooperative agreements enumerate the circumstances during which sharing of video feeds will take place, whether during a weather emergency, a potential disaster, a barricaded subject, or an active shooter. “We’ve had these types of incidents on these properties,” Shep Stein, security director at the Trump Taj Mahal, told Security Director News. “You have multiple agencies responding and assisting all with their own radio systems. The Mutualink allows that interoperability between those radio systems, really by the push of a button.”

As an example, if the Taj Mahal experienced an event that required the response of police and other first responders, the casino’s security department can, using Mutualink, “invite them into our system,” Stein said. “We now are joining each other in radio communications, as well as video coverage, as well as cell phone coverage. So if I’m off property, they can call me, alert me to this event and I can be tied in through my cell phone and participate in the radio communication.”

The cooperative agreements and deployment of Mutualink at the casinos is part of a larger initiative–called “Eyes on Atlantic City”–to identify and leverage all the public and private video surveillance capabilities within the city to enhance public safety, said Gilbert. Atlantic City has unique challenges, according to Gilbert. It’s on a barrier island, surrounded on all sides by water. It has significant critical infrastructure and many locations in the city that are gathering points for large numbers of people, including the concert arenas, casinos, outlet center. “What we’ve tried to embark on is an all-crimes, all-hazards, all-threats, all-the-time doctrine that we’ve adopted at the state level,” Gilbert said.

Once the casinos are all tied into the Mutualink system, which will happen over the next seven to 11 months, Gilbert said other private entities will be brought on board, such as the convention center and the boardwalk. “This is essentially building a community of common interest in the public safety arena,” he said. “And what Mutualink allows us to do is bring information out to that community away from the site of an incident in real time and build a collective situational awareness and partnership in dealing with whatever the incident is at hand.”

According to a press release from New Jersey’s Attorney General’s office, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security Preparedness will fund the hardware purchase, installation and licensing of the Mutualink system through a $350,000 federal grant administered through the New Jersey State Police. Stein said after two years, the individual casinos will inherit the annual maintenance fees of the hardware. Given the relatively low cost to the private entities, Stein called the partnership a “no-brainer.”

When it comes to cooperation within the public safety arena, interoperability provided by Mutualink is the future, Gilbert said. “One of the major findings that came in the aftermath of 9/11 was the need for timely sharing of information and knocking down silos,” he said. “Mutualink is on point with achieving those goals.”