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Building owners to link CCTV cameras to police command centre


Private property owners who want to enhance security within their premises will be allowed to share surveillance feeds with the police once a project to monitor all public places in Nairobi and Mombasa is launched.

Owners of buildings with CCTV cameras will be allowed to provide live surveillance feeds to a command and control center of the National Police Service once the facility that is based at Jogoo House is completed.

The center will be complete by the end of May and will act as the heart of a hi-tech security surveillance system that will initially cover the city of Nairobi and Mombasa.

The Kenya Private Sector Alliance, the ministries of Housing and Transport will play a major role in linking private developers to the NPS surveillance system.

PRIVATE SURVEILLANCE

Having private surveillance feeds linked to the national command and control center will help improve security in private residences that could be away from police cameras that will be mounted to monitor public places.

The updates on the project were given Friday when President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto toured the NPS headquarters where they were taken through the progress made so far in the implementation of a secure communication and surveillance system.

At the end of the project, there will be 1,800 cameras mounted on streets and other public places.
The project also involves equipping police with modern radio sets that have two cameras with one on the front and the other on the back.

The radios support video messages and officers will be able to relay or receive live videos of incidents.

The President and Deputy President were accompanied by Interior Secretary Joseph Nkaissery and his PS Dr Monica Juma.

The two deputy Inspector Generals of Police Grace Kaindi, Samwel Arachi (who is acting as the IG) and Directorate of Criminal Investigations boss Ndegwa Muhoro were present.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

The leaders were taken through the progress achieved in the project implementation by Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.

The project harnesses the power of technology and will enable law enforcement officers to effectively coordinate and deploy their resources in response to threats to national security.

The state-of-the-art system comes with video surveillance, digital radios that would replace the walkie-talkies currently used by police, video conferencing system, central command for the communication system and a mapping system.

Some 7600 officers will be equipped with the multi-media radio communication devices during the first phase of the project. The system is scalable meaning that it can be upgraded with newer features if the need arises in future.