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New FlexWatch™ digital video surveillance camera software, distributed by One Step Data, Inc., provided robbery footage on CD in record time to police, helping to facilitate the positive identification and prosecution of the armed robber.

We usually don't think of a children's retailer as being particularly security savvy, but Jenny Bec's, an upscale children's toy, furniture and bedding shop in fashionable Santa Monica, California, was well equipped to deal with an armed robbery that occurred in the store on December 23, 2004. In fact, the retailer, who just opened its doors two months earlier, was outfitted with one of the most state-of-the-art digital video surveillance systems available to retailers today - the FlexWatch software system, distributed by One Step Data, Inc. - which integrates with the popular Retail Pro® POS/inventory management software. Not only did full details of the robbery in progress get filmed digitally on three video cameras, but the store owner was able to access the robbery footage immediately, download it to a CD, and expeditiously present it to police as evidence of positive identification of the robber, leading to his subsequent prosecution. The speed and ease of accessibility in obtaining this robbery footage represents a significant improvement in retail video security surveillance, and a giant leap over traditional CCTV applications.

Jenny Bec's was the fourth strike in a string of retail armed robberies, occurring over a two-week period, in this west Los Angeles ocean-side community, which were perpetrated by the same individual. Having just been released on parole after serving a 16-year sentence for 35 prior armed robberies, this ex-con was no novice at his craft. But apparently, any expectations he may have had of robbing this children's store without getting caught were dead wrong, despite his recent successes at escape with the other retailers just prior.

"There were four of us closing the store," said owner, Jenny (full name withheld). "Two of my employees went outside, and this guy just came through the back door, and then locked it behind him. He held a gun at my sister and at me, and walked us up to the front register. He took the money out of our cash drawers, about $1,200, and then locked us in the bathroom and left. The two employees that were outside tried to get back in to the store, while he was holding us at bay, and they noticed the door was locked. When they opened it, they could hear the robber yelling at us, so they immediately went next door and called the police."

"The footage gotten from the video cameras was used as supporting evidence for the police," Jenny continues. I had three cameras on the floor, and they showed this guy with a gun aimed at me, and my sister. We isolated the segments from all three cameras, and saved them to disks. Then we gave them to the police, which made it very obvious who the robber was, what he looked like, what he was wearing, and that he was holding us at gunpoint. It helped to seal the charges against this guy."

Providing immediate evidence to identify a criminal who has robbed a store is actually a by-product of the software. FlexWatch was designed, not to specifically catch robbers, but to provide a better solution to cut costly losses from employee and consumer theft, by integrating sales information with a continuous digital surveillance output. The net result is real-time digital monitoring of every POS workstation keystroke and merchandise scan, synchronized to frame-by-frame video images of the transaction. This allows retailers to quickly and easily view video and sales information on one screen to determine if items were entered or scanned correctly, and call up and view all transactions that may be considered questionable or high-risk. Catching criminals as they rob a store, and making this information immediately available to police, is a bonus.

FlexWatch has the ability to store and retrieve information easily, and provides for synchronized remote monitoring. The system uses TCPIP as its backbone to connect video units to the workstations running the digital video management software application with Retail Pro, making available extensive options for video viewing and POS data monitoring, including: (1) viewing video along with POS transactions in both real time and recorded; (2) viewing locally at store level; (3) viewing remotely from any PC with web access; (4) viewing on a wireless hand-held device; and (5) controlling video camera pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) remotely.

"With a video tape, it can take hours to find the right spot in the video, to locate what was going on," says Steve Rudner, Deputy Director of Operations, for One Step Data. "There is a time stamp on some of these tape systems, but you would still have to fast forward, and fast rewind, to finally get to the spot. In the case of this robbery, you would have had to do it with three different cameras that were filming. That gets critically time consuming when an armed robber is at large. With FlexWatch, it is very simple - you just do a quick filter, and it brings you right to the time of day, or the incident that you are trying to find. It literally took only 10 minutes to get the Jenny Bec's robbery footage located, and downloaded to a CD, for all three cameras."

"Another important factor, is that with video tape you have no way of getting the specific robbery scene off of the system, to use it as evidence," continues Rudner. "You would literally have to use the entire original tape, including the irrelevant hours of recording before and after the crime. With FlexWatch, because it is digital, we were able to offload just that time segment of the tape required for evidence. The segment was already indexed and time-sequenced, linking footage from all three cameras. This was then presented, all on the same CD, to the Santa Monica Police Department as evidence, making it very easy for them to use in their investigation."

One Step Data upgraded Jenny Bec's system to a 200-gigabyte hard drive to run the FlexWatch software. It has the capability of recording up to four cameras simultaneously, and can be expanded to accept eight cameras with server modifications. The system can record up to 30 days of continuous viewing for all cameras. There is no changeover with the digital recordings, it just overwrites when instructed, as different from videotapes that require changing about every two weeks.

Jenny Bec's FlexWatch TCPIP remote monitoring capability gives the store an even stronger security mode. If the owner is in a hotel room on vacation, for example, she can go onto the Internet and literally see the store in real time, while the specifics of the POS transactions being viewed (scanning and register key strokes) are displayed on her screen, simultaneous with the video. She can even selectively manipulate each camera, zooming in and panning. This is not possible with regular videotape camera systems.

Who would have thought that a children's retailer, like Jenny Bec's, would possess such state-of-the-art sophistication in video surveillance monitoring? Certainly not the criminal that took his chances, and ultimately lost, to one extremely well equipped shop owner with a thirst for the latest in security technology.

FlexWatch sells for approximately $6,000 per location. Various training, service and support options are available.

One Step Data services over 1,000 clients, primarily in the mid-tier retailing market. For more information on their FlexWatch surveillance system, POS/inventory Retail Pro solutions, and support for retailers, please contact Kevin McAdam at One Step Data, Inc., at 320 West Arden Ave., Suite #110, Glendale, CA 91203; 818-543-4777; Fax 818-242-8599; email kmcadam@onestepdata.com; or visit their web site at www.onestepdata.com.