Little Rock police cameras are producing higher-quality images as the department's surveillance network is integrated with a fiber-optic Internet network installed across the city earlier this year.

Police more than doubled data storage on the surveillance network to accommodate high-bandwidth transmissions of more fluid, detailed video.

Doug Olive, camera network systems coordinator for the Little Rock police, said most of the 53 cameras on the network had previously transmitted footage via cellular Internet. Images became blocky and disjointed, as the limited bandwidth available by cellular transmission was divided among police servers.

"The signal was spotty, so what you would get was a couple of frames and it would stop. And then you might get a couple more frames, and it would stop," Olive said.

The Democrat-Gazette reported on the low-quality footage in July after gunshots were fired in downtown's crowded River Market district and surveillance footage of the incident proved useless to investigators.

Servers now operate on the city's fiber-optic network, and more than 20 police cameras have been switched to higher-bandwidth cable Internet transmissions. Police plan to have 40 cameras transmitting via cable Internet by the end of October, according to Lt. Casey Clark.

Most cameras in the $500,000 surveillance network, which was installed last year, had been yielding footage between 12 and 15 frames per second. Cameras integrated with the fiber-optic network stream video at about 20 frames per second, according to Clark.

Though the Canon VB-C60 cameras are capable of transmitting at 30 frames per second, they would need to operate on a much smaller, private network to do so, Clark said.

"I don't know how much more real-time we can honestly get than this," he said. "It may be capable of doing 30 frames per second in an optimal setting where a single camera is running on a single server, but in the real world you're probably pushing it to the max if you can get 25 [frames per second] out of it."

The fiber-optic network, which also serves all 56 Little Rock School District facilities, was completed in late June. Clark said a "total redesign" of the surveillance network began shortly afterward.

To transmit and retain higher-quality images, data storage was increased from 2 terabytes of footage every 10 days to more than 4 terabytes. That's about 400 gigabytes of data per day.

Transmission costs increased more than fourfold from about $400 per month to $1,623.36 per month, according to Clark. The department's "fiber backbone," as he calls it, is provided by AT&T.

Verizon and Comcast provide Internet for the surveillance network, as well, in case the other providers have service failures.

On the redesigned network, officers can access live footage of any police camera in the city. Police viewing stations could previously stream footage only from cameras in their respective divisions, Clark said. Cameras on the fiber-optic network also respond faster to pan, tilt and optical zoom functions controlled by an officer.

Cameras on the fiber-optic network were used Aug. 25 to coordinate search efforts after an accused child rapist escaped from custody before a court appearance downtown. Anael Castro-Hernandez, 30, was recorded by a camera positioned at West Markham Street and Broadway as he and other suspects were being unloaded from a Pulaski County sheriff's office van outside the county courthouse.

The footage shows Castro-Hernandez, after slipping his handcuffs, exit the van and remove his jail shirt while running east on Markham. Castro-Hernandez, being chased by a deputy, then turned south onto Center Street. Another camera at East Fourth Street and Scott streets recorded Castro-Hernandez running east toward the Fourche River, the last place a man matching his description was seen.

Castro-Hernandez remained a fugitive late Monday. But authorities were able to identify and track him after his escape because of smooth, clear footage transmitted on the "fiber backbone," Clark said.

"It's not a great success story, but we were able to tell our units, 'All right, we've pulled up the tape. This is the direction he ran.' And we were able, through our network of downtown cameras, to actually follow him as he went from Markham and Broadway," he said.

Footage from a camera atop Ottenheimer Market Hall provided no such clues after someone fired a gun in the River Market July 9. Police reported that people ran after the gunfire, but that's difficult to tell. The footage, released to local media outlets by police, is choppy and people appear as blobs of color with no discernible features. No muzzle flash is visible from the gunfire.

That camera, along with others downtown, has been integrated with the fiber-optic network. It transmits footage via cable Internet, but with noticeably more clarity than in the past. Clark demonstrated the capabilities of the reworked surveillance network for the Democrat-Gazette on Friday.

"It's a lot more fluid," he said. "There's no real time delay."

The cameras, which record 24 hours a day, have also yielded better descriptions of suspect vehicles, according to Clark. But as he has in the past, Clark said surveillance footage is supplemental to investigations, not a primary tool.

The cameras are not always being monitored by an officer. When three bronze sculptures valued at $30,000 were recently stolen from Riverfront Park, police on Thursday reviewed 10 days of footage -- the most that they store -- and determined that the statues had been stolen before then. A camera positioned above the sculptures likely recorded the theft, Clark said, but no one was watching when it happened.

"We give due diligence to watching the cameras, but it's not like we have a fixed force of 100 people whose job is to sit and watch cameras," he said.

Police are exploring the possibility of integrating license plate readers with the surveillance network at certain intersections, but that "won't happen any time soon" for reasons of funding, Clark said.

The readers automatically snap high-resolution photos of license plates and store them in a database. Little Rock police have used one reader, mounted on either side of a patrol car, since 2012. The readers have helped identify stolen vehicles, according to police.

Metro on 09/02/2014