"Parking enforcement officers are frequently threatened and harassed during their day-to-day duties," explains Robert Amante, Autovu Product Manager. "These altercations can lead to officer injuries, staff demoralisation, and increased turnover. By equipping their officers with body-worn cameras­-rather than more threatening tools such as batons or pepper spray-parking organisations can help protect their staff without escalating confrontations. Should an altercation occur, organizations now have access to both video and ALPR evidence for ensuing investigations."

With the simple press of a button on a body-worn camera, an officer can trigger a video recording. Autovu associates ALPR-equipped vehicles with specific body-worn cameras, and ties video clips to ALPR metadata such as plate reads, GPS coordinates and timestamps. When video evidence from body-worn cameras needs to be retrieved, users can easily search based on plate number, time range or by using maps.

Through this integration, parking enforcement organisations can deploy body-worn cameras as an addition to their existing Genetec ALPR system. Previously, customers had to deploy a standalone solution to equip their officers with body-worn cameras, a process that was time-consuming and costly. Support for body-worn cameras in parking enforcement will be available from Genetec Autovu channel partners by August 2018.

Building on one of the industry's biggest ecosystems of parking partners, Genetec has added support for two new companies to further enhance access to its parking systems: Netpark, a cloud-based point of sale and revenue management software service used to manage valet or self-park operations; and Yourparkingspace a web-based service that matches drivers to available privately and commercially owned car parking spaces.

The International Parking Institute Conference or IPI2018 will take place from the 3rd - 6th June 2018 in Orlando, Florida, USA.