The Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, located in the heart of Philadelphia, is a living testament and tribute to the victims of the atrocities of the Holocaust. The goal of the Memorial Plaza is to educate visitors on this shameful time in history and compel them to work towards a world of tolerance and enlightenment wherein nothing like this could ever occur again.
The Delaware Valley Intelligence Center (DVIC), weighed in on the needed security measures. Under the institutional umbrella of the Philadelphia Police Department, DVIC serves as the regional fusion center and utilises a collaborative and proactive approach to forecasting, preventing and/or responding to all-threats, all-hazards and major events. They assessed the video surveillance requirements of the Memorial Plaza.
The Foundation’s construction company then compiled the specifications, based on the DVIC’s recommendations, and Convergint Technologies, a global, service-based systems integration company, delivered the best proposal to suit their needs. Convergint specified video surveillance cameras from Hanwha Techwin. Because of the large size of the Memorial Plaza and park area, a standard definition camera wouldn’t suffice, so Convergint opted for Hanwha’s high resolution PNO-9080R 4K Network IR Bullet Camera.
This model allows the viewer to zoom in and see, in close detail, the face of someone passing by the camera who may be a suspect. The PNO-9080R from Hanwha’s Wisenet P series performance IP camera line is a 4K camera, key in capturing people and events in full detail.
For the actual Memorial site at large, such high resolution wasn’t required, but Convergint, in the interest of overall protection, recommended and installed the XNO-8080R 5 megapixel network IR bullet camera to ensure safety all around the perimeter of the park and Memorial Plaza area. This 5 megapixel resolution camera works well in both day and night conditions, and features analytics for loitering, directional detection, fog detection, audio and tampering detection, as well as digital auto tracking and sound classification.
The Hanwha cameras are tied into a Genetec Security Center VMS, which allows authorised administrators as well as the local Police Department to log in and view the video footage at any time.
The Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza was not spared from anti-Semitism. It was vandalised by a man who etched the initials “REM” and two SS bolts – a known Nazi symbol – into the memorial’s pillars. With the help of the Hanwha surveillance cameras, the perpetrator was quickly apprehended.
“The cameras proved to be fantastic in resolving the incident,” said Jennifer Wright, Project Manager at the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation. “I looked at the footage and was able to get a few different angles of the person responsible for the crime. The footage was of good quality and I could clearly see him. We sent it to Philadelphia Police Department and they put out a media advisory; we also shared images of the person responsible for the defacement of the Six Pillars on Facebook. Footage of the incident was shared thousands of times on social media. Public sharing of these images eventually led to a positive identification of a suspect.”
