I had a question comes my way about the recent , tragic shooting at the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas. This person wanted some insight as to the response of security and surveillance during and immediately after such an incident. I figured that this subject may be of interest to many of you out there, so here is my response.
First of all, here are some physical facts about surveillance cameras, security operations and surveillance operations at the larger casinos, both in Las Vegas and all around the world.
Most casinos have two separate surveillance rooms. One of the rooms, is manned by surveillance personnel who are experts in all types of casino gaming and cheating. These are the people who actually watch the games, the money, the cashiers and count rooms, and do all the things that you think of as the "eye in the sky" doing. These surveillance agents will have access to every single camera on property.
The other surveillance room will be manned by security personnel who will also be (usually) the radio dispatchers for the security department and also monitor the Life Safety System(s) on property. These officers will only have limited access to cameras, usually consisting of non gaming public areas, most back of house areas, all garages and parking lots, and other areas that are patrolled by security but they don't have anything to do with gaming or money handling.
Now on to recording and reviewing. In the VCR era, which ended around ten years ago, not all cameras were recorded all of the time. The only cameras that were recorded full-time we're ones which were on table games, count rooms, cash or coin cages, or anything having to do with gaming and money. Other cameras were recorded only when that they were pulled up on a working monitor, or they might be recorded on a quad screen or a multiplex, which can record and display. up to 16 screens at once.
Nowadays everyone has gone to digital video recorders (DVR's) which use computers and servers and hard drive storage arrays to record all cameras all of the time. Even the cheapest operators (and believe me, most Casino owners try and operate surveillance as cheaply as possible) were unable to continue to use VCRs because VCRs and videotapes are not even being made anymore.
Back of house cameras are recorded at a lower resolution, bit-rate and frame-rate, and use less expensive, (sometimes) analog cameras, but they are still being recorded. The gaming and money cameras are higher in resolution, bit-rate and frame rate. The public would call these "hi-def", and the best of them offer absolutely amazing video quality. They are expensive, but the casino doesn't mind paying more for them because they make detecting cheating much easier.
As far as doing reviews, the security officers usually will have limited or no ability to review what has been recorded. Most reviews get passed on to the actual surveillance Department, who's operators are more skilled, know what to look for, and are able to archive anything worth saving onto DVD's or dedicated long term storage arrays.
So that's some background into how a typical surveillance operation is set up at a large Hotel Casino. Next time we'll talk about the typical response to an incident where public safety has been compromised.
See you then.
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