By ELIZABETH MALLOY, The Daily Transcript
Friday, October 31
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It's late at night in a dark apartment complex. A hooded figure walks up to a wall and pulls out a spray can. Just as he's about to paint the building with graffiti, a voice booms from a speaker over head.
"Stop what you are doing. You are on camera, and the police have been called."
This scene is becoming a reality in neighborhoods all over San Diego and far beyond with the technology created by Carlsbad company SensorWave. Established in 2003, SensorWave makes surveillance cameras that are not only monitored by offsite technicians at all times, but are also equipped with a speaker system that allows a monitor to speak to people on camera from anywhere in the world.
"The mission is creating safer communities," said Kendell Lang, chief executive officer of SensorWave. "If you take the premise that we can actually change behaviors through our proactive security solutions, we can dramatically change environments."
SensorWave's "Virtual Patrol" product is a surveillance camera system designed to go above and beyond typical cameras. They are generally placed on top of a 30-foot pole, making them very hard to tamper with. The cameras are made of bulletproof and bullet-resistant materials, are able to zoom in and, in some cases, swivel 360 degrees to capture everything from faces to license plates.
Unlike other video cameras, they can be programmed to only focus on a very specific field of site, such as one company's parking lot. This saves time and effort for the people monitoring the cameras.
Kendell Lang is chief executive officer of Carlsbad-based SensorWave. Photo: J. Kat Woronowicz
They are monitored, at all times, by crews in one of four locations: One in Carlsbad, one in Framingham, Mass., one in Thailand and one in India. Since the monitors, who are mostly trained in law enforcement, are looking at a very limited field of view, they can monitor up to 160 cameras per person at one time.
The monitors are also helped by the fact that SensorWave's software alerts them if suspicious activity is occurring. For instance, if a car pulls into the parking lot of a company that's closed for the weekend, that camera's field of view will begin flashing on the monitor's computer screen. He or she can then look and see if there appears to be a crime happening, or if it's just someone making a U-turn.
Lang said that SensorWave's technology is changing three industries: Camera manufacturers, central monitoring and guarding.
Guarding in particular is getting a boost, and that includes law enforcement. One of the biggest expenditures for police and fire officials every year is false alarms, and Virtual Patrol can help reduce those. Right now, SensorWave is largely working with public/private partnerships, meaning a private company will buy the equipment, which costs $75 per camera, per month, and allow local law enforcement access to it for no charge.
Most of SensorWave's customers are companies who want to protect their buildings, but there are a number of housing projects that use them. One in San Diego's Logan Heights neighborhood, Sea Breeze Gardens, has seen a crime rate go from one crime reported every day and a half, to one crime every five days.
"The police call us a force multiplier," Lang said. "It's not only the quantity but it's the quality of the calls. The incidents that are occurring are less severe."
The founder of SensorWave is a man named Mo Bjornestad. Bjornestad grew up in the inner city and was once abducted as a child. He wanted to create a product that would make neighborhoods safer. He came up with SensorWave's camera systems, and Lang, who joined the company last year, helped improve the software, allowing for the "talk-down" voice software, among other advancements in the product.
While SensorWave does sell systems to clients, the company also utilizes channel partners, meaning existing guarding and alarm companies can purchase SensorWave's technology. Asked if this could lead some day to a major alarm company like ADT purchasing SensorWave, Lang said it's possible, but probably not likely in the near future.
"I really want to get probably three years out in terms of growing our own organic revenues before we're in a position that I think we would get the price that Mo and I would accept to sell the company," he said.
One issue that is a constant concern for SensorWave, and especially the company's attorneys, is privacy. Lang said he thinks people are generally accustomed to security cameras these days, but acknowledged that the added abilities of SensorWave's technology can make for thorny legal situations.
"We are using talk-down, but we don't listen," Lang said. "There's a specific legal reason why we don't do that, because anything that we would listen to constitutes a warrantless wire-tap."
The monitors who watch SensorWave's camera's are also under constant surveillance so the company can see if they use the cameras or the talk-down capability inappropriately.
"We have researched and looked at all the legal ramifications and are very comfortable that our position as a service provider is very well protected from a liability standpoint," Lang said.
Lang said that there are plenty of sociological studies that suggest surveillance is a strong deterrent against crime, and ultimately, that's what SensorWave is trying to accomplish.
"We have a lot of great customer testimonials about how (this) technology is changing lives," he said.
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