Last February, Shady Azzam-Gomez, the Vice President overseeing Suffolk County Community College’s (SCCC) IT Department, reported to the Board of Trustees that several cameras on the Grant Campus were not operational and asked when the college was going to fix the remaining cameras. At that point, only five percent of the malfunctioning had been restored. A third of the campus’s security cameras were not functioning because of a transition to a new operating software for the college’s mainframe computer, which manages and stores all security footage.
According to the Director of Public Safety Baycan Fideli, things have changed rapidly. The college has been converting all of the cameras used in the old system to the new system since the summer. Director Fideli said, “Everything we have that was on the old system has been converted, plus new stuff.”
However, the changeover did not include the cameras in the Asharoken Building, which still haven’t been brought on to the new system, and are therefore, not operational. According to Fideli, Asharoken is the only building where all of the cameras are not working which means there was no video footage of the recent flashing incident perpetrator who still has not been identified. A young man exposed himself to a SCCC employee. It is still unclear when cameras will be back up and running.
Across the college, there are over 300 security cameras used to record and monitor each campus. There are approximately 60 cameras on the Grant Campus, according to the Director of Public Safety. All of the cameras across the college use the same operating system for the same mainframe computer.
It should also be known that the cameras across the college are not being actively monitored meaning that no one is watching the cameras live 24/7. High costs of hiring trained staff who could identify possible incidents before they occur in real-time was the reason given for the lack of auditing. A Public Safety official explained that given SCCC’s relatively safe location — compared to campuses in densely populated cities — the cost of trained staff specifically for monitoring would not be worth it. “The cameras are meant for Public Safety to review incidents that have already been reported.”
While cameras have been present at the College for over 20 years, they were initially ineffective and prone to technical failures. Nearly a decade ago, Director Fideli began investing in the security camera program to keep them upgraded and working, which was not done by his predecessors.
The cameras are an expensive security measure, especially when considering the cost of their maintenance, which can run up to $20,000 anually Fideli explained. He also said that the cost to transition the cameras to the new operating software across the college was “way over $100,000.” Over the last decade, SCCC has spent $350,000+ implementing and maintaining the cameras.
Out of all the cameras on Grant, Director Fideli said only two were not working. He did not include the cameras in Asharoken in that count, as he doesn’t include them in the category of dysfunctional because they work but need to be brought into the new operating system. Public Safety has also added some new cameras (i.e. the LRC) since transitioning, along with upgrading existing cameras themselves.
By this time next year, Director Baycan Fideli hopes to have all the cameras across the college working and brought on to the new system. After that threshold is met, he intends to go back to the oldest cameras still being used and begin upgrading those from the ground up.
