Streamlining Campus Security Investigations: How Intelligent Cloud Video Enhances Search and Law Enforcement Collaboration

When critical situations occur at your educational institution, whether that’s a fight between students, an incident of theft, or a suspicious person on campus perimeters, a video surveillance system can provide the evidence needed to conduct investigations. School security teams and law enforcement depend on surveillance technology to aid collaboration and ensure that cases are handled and resolved in a timely manner.

Unfortunately, many institutions use video surveillance systems that are more a hurdle than a help. Finding and sharing video is often slow and inefficient, leading to investigations that take unnecessary amounts of time and waste valuable team resources. To address these challenges, school security teams need intelligent cloud video solutions. These advanced platforms streamline investigations by enabling teams to locate video efficiently via advanced video analytics and integrations, including access control, and share it with internal and external parties while ensuring student and faculty privacy is respected with secure clip sharing.

In this article, we explore the obstacles of traditional video investigative review in educational settings, as well as the benefits of adopting cloud video surveillance with advanced search and share options.

How Delayed Investigations Jeopardize School Safety

During campus investigations, reviewing security video is often slow and time-consuming. In fact, gathering digital evidence typically takes the most time during an investigation—a problem made even worse when the teams responsible for locating, reviewing, and sharing video aren’t properly trained and are forced to use an inefficient system that’s unintuitive and difficult to navigate.

If educational security personnel lack the ability to conduct prompt investigations with their video security system, it puts students at enormous risk. For example, in 2018, a school failed to turn video over to the court in a timely manner during an investigation, resulting in the footage being permanently deleted. In situations similar to this, offenders can evade justice—and may even commit additional crimes, believing that security at the institution is unable to effectively intervene.

To streamline the investigative process and prevent crime on campus, schools can leverage advanced search tools in a cloud video platform. An easy-to-use system can help streamline campus investigations, enabling faculty to quickly locate relevant footage of an incident and securely share it via the cloud with the necessary parties. These tools reduce the number of steps taken to successfully locate and share video evidence for investigations, in turn saving valuable time and operational resources.

The Benefits of Intelligent Cloud Video for School Operations

Advanced cloud-managed video security offers intelligent search and share capabilities that can help enhance school safety operations. These capabilities include event search powered by AI-based video analytics, system integrations, secure and fast options for finding, saving, and sharing evidence, and insights into access control trails. Together, these tools equip educational institutions to conduct thorough investigations

Quickly Find the Video You Need in Seconds

With intelligent search capabilities powered by AI analytics, integrated security solutions, and system events, schools can streamline investigative efforts instead of needing to review lengthy segments of video manually. This enables educational institutions to reduce hours of manual review and fortify school safety. 

Schools can leverage AI analytics tools such as: 

• Person and Vehicle: By using person and vehicle analytics, schools can surface video events of people, cars, and other vehicles and objects entering view of a camera, helping reduce how much video needs to be reviewed during investigations. 

• Line Crossing: This analytics type enhances search by enabling security teams to quickly locate events if an object or person passes through a virtual line or area in view of a camera. 

• Loitering or Intrusion: With loitering or intrusion analytics, schools can search based on video of persons and objects detected in an area for more than a defined period of time. 

• License Plate Recognition: LPR technology helps find video of vehicles with specific characters on license plates to streamline investigations into vehicles in question. 

Schools can also locate video by searching for events tied to integrated solutions. This can be accomplished with an open platform cloud video system, enabling access control, alarm panel, environmental sensor, and other system events to be surfaced quickly. Additionally, AI-powered search, such as attribute filters and similarity search, can help quickly locate relevant footage by using intelligent analytics to identify specific attributes, such as red shirt or blue car, or by selecting an existing object in the scene to quickly find similar video across cameras and locations. 

Finally, other tools such as thumbnail search provide a convenient way to drill down to the exact moment an incident occurred on camera in seconds versus hours. School security teams can easily click through thumbnail images based on subtle scene changes to find the video needed during an investigation. With these capabilities as part of a surveillance solution, schools can ensure their investigations are conducted in a fast and timely manner. 

Streamline Collaboration with Law Enforcement 

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) said, “No single factor has been more crucial to reducing crime levels than the partnership between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.” To better protect students and ensure they have a positive environment to learn in, it’s vital that video of incidents can be securely shared to law enforcement, campus police, or other parties. 

Effective video sharing enables law enforcement and campus security to respond swiftly and conduct thorough investigations, which in turn can deter future incidents and increase community trust. However, this process requires schools to navigate complex considerations surrounding data privacy—particularly with regulations like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). 

To streamline collaboration while safeguarding student privacy, institutions should adopt practices and solutions that offer: 

• Permission-Based Access: Only authorized individuals should access or share video clips, with administrators having the ability to grant, restrict, or revoke access as needed. 

• Chain of Custody: All activity related to video access—views, downloads, and shares—should be logged automatically to maintain a clear chain of custody, increasing transparency and supporting investigative integrity. 

• Secure Links: Password-protected links can be easily shared via email, minimizing the chances of unauthorized dissemination and ensures that access aligns with the institution’s policies. 

Audit Access Control Trails to Improve Campus Security 

After the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the Broward County Public Schools made significant investments in integrating access control and video systems districtwide — improving their ability to audit events and respond to security incidents, as described in the Final Report of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission. 

Integrating access control systems with video surveillance has become a foundational best practice for improving campus safety and the effectiveness of investigations. By synchronizing these technologies, schools can more efficiently monitor critical events, verify activity, and respond to potential threats — strengthening the protection of students, staff and property. 

Integrating your school’s access control solution with video streamlines investigations, as you can more easily find relevant footage of suspicious or criminal activity by tracking access control events across campus, with benefits including: 

• Instant Access to Relevant Footage: When surveillance and access control are linked, security teams can quickly retrieve video clips corresponding to specific access events, such as door entries, failed swipes, or forced openings. This rapid access saves valuable time during investigations and enables a faster, more informed response. 

• Comprehensive Movement Audits: Integrated systems allow for the auditing of an individual’s movement across multiple buildings and access points. For example, if card access logs show unusual entries, security can verify them with corresponding video footage to determine if the person is authorized and if policy is being followed. This also helps deter “tailgating” or improper sharing of credentials. 

By combining access control and security video, institutions can find needed video faster, resolve incidents more thoroughly, and collaborate with law enforcement more effectively, in turn building better learning environments for students and better workplaces for your faculty. 

Empower Your School with Intelligent Search Options in OpenEye Web Services

By leveraging a cloud video solution, schools can improve their investigative time to better protect students and faculty while also reducing the number of steps needed to conduct a successful and thorough investigation. This, in turn, saves your teams valuable time and resources, improving your educational institution’s operations.

OpenEye Web Services (OWS) helps reduce the time spent managing incidents with enhanced search features, saving resources and improving your operational efficiency. Intelligent search options in OWS offer the ability to search based on analytics events, including line crossing, loitering, LPR, and more. AI-powered Attribute Filters and Similarity Search enable school security teams to quickly locate key video footage across multiple channels by using unique attributes and filters, such as clothing color, vehicle color, or vehicle type. OWS can also search on events generated by integrated devices, such as access control, alarm panels, environmental sensors, or other systems, helping pull up relevant footage and further enhancing investigations.

OWS’ powerful clip sharing options provide seamless, fast sharing of video with campus security, local law enforcement, or district management, using the cloud to instantly share secure clips via email. This expedites the video retrieval and sharing process and aids investigations.

OpenEye’s integrations with access control systems also allows schools to audit access control trails for enhanced insight into individual movement across campus facilities. School operators can seamlessly pair video with access control events to verify who entered a door and when — ideal for tracking staff or student movement during investigations.

To learn more about how OpenEye can help enhance your campuses’ security and streamline your investigative processes, book an OWS demo today to see our powerful, advanced cloud surveillance platform in action.