Alfredo Garcia
Lantern Staff
Over the fall 2018 semester, the Department of Public Safety received an electronic upgrade and renovations were made to the office layout. The office moved around and a wall was built between College Health and Counseling. As part of the department’s new renovations, the West door is now open every day from seven a.m. to 11 p.m. Students can get to the West dorms from this entrance too. The campus police have added key cards to the dorms.
“[The keycard locks] limit access who needs to be when and where,” said Chief of Police Jason Kenney.
The electronic upgrade gave the department 12 brand new monitors and three new types of cameras. The stationary cameras are cameras that do not move, but they can capture an image and then track that image all across campus via the other cameras already in place. The fish eye camera, or “God’s eye” as Kenney describes it, is a camera that can be used to look around in a room. It can see an entire room and if an incident occurs such as a robbery, it can be used to zoom in and look at the individual’s face. The final new camera is a big dome that has four cameras inside of it.
These new camera updates are what Kenney calls “[a] three headed monster”. With the addition of these new cameras, there are now over 100 cameras across campus every building has cameras inside and now two outside. Cameras are in places where there was no security earlier for example, in the lockers, gym, stadium and Educare.
“[It is a] good opportunity for us to make the best system that we could,” Kenney said.
