Video Management Helps New Orleans Catch Illegal Dumpers

Source: Gov Tech Published: September 21, 2020

Video surveillance has been around since at least the 1920s, but as the cameras have gotten more advanced, their use cases have multiplied. And so have their numbers. The city of New Orleans now manages more than 600 video feeds in public spaces, and their use of a video management platform from Genetec over the past few years made it feasible to address a longstanding problem: illegal dumping.

As part of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s “CleanUp NOLA” initiative launched in 2018, the Department of Sanitation paid for 20 motion cameras to be installed in the last two fiscal years at the city’s landfills. New Orleans City Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen told Government Technology many thousands of tires had been illegally deposited in her district.

“When I got into office, I already knew that that was an issue in my district,” she said. “Illegal dumping has been a chronic problem in the city of New Orleans.”

In this case, catching the culprits wasn’t just a problem of technology but of staff time. Even as they installed new cameras at landfills and other locations, no department could constantly monitor them all in person, or personally inspect every video feed every morning to see if someone had dropped off garbage the night before.