Shields Crime and Security Consultants is rolling out state-of-the-art equipment in the form of the Verkada Integrated Security System in Jamaica to help companies improve monitoring of their businesses with the system also adoptable for crime fighting.

The system is among the latest technology in terms of monitoring and detection, capturing peoples images with the ability to recall at a later date based on several criteria including time of day, colour of clothes, type of clothes, a vehicle make, colour or license and so on. It is also ideal for companies monitoring temperatures on certain products, and will record temperature changes and send a signal if it deviates from the set temperature.

“Everytime we do the demonstration, we normally get a huge amount of interest for this. It’s quite revolutionary,” Mark Shields, CEO of Shields Crime and Security Consultants, told the Jamaica Observer.

“Nobody else in Jamaica has got a system like this. There is nothing like it. People will go out and they’ll buy an access control system. They’ll buy conventional CCTV cameras, which are very limited. So we are talking about something that’s like moving from an old-fashioned cell phone to an iPhone. That’s the sort of generational change that this is, compared with where we are coming from,” he added.

The system can also be used by security agencies to detect crimes and send signals to the police.

“We are doing a pilot with the Jamaica Constabulary Force which is interested in deploying it in crime fighting,” the former deputy commissioner of police pointed out. He said it can also be used for traffic monitoring and has facial recognition and can read a licence plate.

Shields said the Verkada system solves a lot of issues that have come up with the operation of CCTVs.

“It’s the first company really that integrates every system together,” he said. Shields has already deployed the system at several hotels across the country and other corporate locations.

“We’ve sold to hotels, supermarkets, warehouses. Anyone with a medium to large organisation would benefit from something like this.”

He readily admits that “Our cameras are approximately 20 per cent more expensive than a conventional camera, but you’re getting 98 per cent more performance from it in terms of the applications that you can put into that.”

With Verkada, he said companies can reduce their spend on security guards, reducing the number of personnel to smaller more efficient numbers while focusing on technology.

“We tend to try and push the frontier technology in order that people go forward to spend a little bit more money, because it’s an investment but not that much money.”

“Shields was established in 2009. We were established as a security consultancy. But as we’ve grown, we’ve focused on technology. We believe that security is about technology rather than security guards. We do have security guards that’s with some very high-end clients, but our preferred option we try to push to Jamaica is to stop the reliance on people, security guards, because they can make mistakes, they can fall asleep and may not turn up for work, and focus on investing in technology to support security guards.”

“The biggest advantage in terms of detecting crime, it saves hours and hours and hours going through footage on the conventional system because with this, you van type in colour, make and the face of a person which we can circulate.”

“Having more CCTVs reduce the incentive for people to conduct crime. There is some evidence in terms of preventing crime, but in terms of detecting crime, it’s overwhelming. Th more cameras, the more opportunities there is to actually capture and identify an offender from a range of crimes.”