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Parking Lot Surveillance Cameras: Your Complete Guide
Choosing the right surveillance camera for your parking lot is a critical factor in enhancing security and safety. In this blog, LotGuard tells you everything you need to know about what key features you need to consider.
Whether you manage a commercial parking lot, vehicle storage facility or car dealership, it must be secured against criminal activity.
Parking lots are vulnerable areas for loitering and crimes, including theft, vandalism, carjackings, and violent assaults. In fact, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 1 in 10 property crimes happen in parking lots and garages.
Parking lots attract criminals due to their seclusion and abundance of hiding spots. These criminals seek to steal property and target customers and employees travelling to and from their cars.
Unfortunately, criminals are conditioned to believe that parking lots are an easy target due to their lack of active security systems - and, in too many cases, this is true.
Don't allow your parking lot to become the next crime statistic; now is the time to invest in a high-quality security system and protect your property, employees, guest, and customers.
Are Surveillance Cameras Necessary for Parking Lot Security?
There are many ways to make your parking lots less attractive to criminal activity. We detail all of these in our free download 'The Complete Guide to Parking Lot Security'.
If you do nothing else whilst visiting our website, be sure to pick up a copy of this guide.
Key suggestions for securing your parking lot covered in this guide include:
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Installing lighting fixtures across your lots
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Controlling access in and out of the lot
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Installing perimeter fencing where possible
While these measures will discourage criminals, they aren't enough to completely stop crime from happening. The most important step you can take in preventing parking lot crime is installing visible surveillance cameras.
Surveillance cameras keep watch over your lots and properties, helping prevent break-ins, vandalism, and burglary.
They are the most proven and cost-effective step you can take to reduce crime and loitering on any commercial parking lot.
Surveillance cameras not only allow you to respond to security breaches in real-time, but also act as a deterrent to opportunist criminals.
The presence of a highly-visible security camera will, in most cases, persuade a criminal to move on from your site. This visible deterrence can be enhanced by installing warning signage around your site, highlighting the presence of cameras.
If a crime does still occur, the recorded footage from the surveillance camera provides digital evidence that can be used for law enforcement investigations, enabling the identification of perpetrators and decreasing your business's legal liability.
Enhancing your surveillance cameras with remote video monitoring services will enable you to stop criminals in their tracks and protect your people and property.
What Features Does My Parking Lot Surveillance Camera Need?
Having a surveillance camera at your parking lot will undoubtedly boost security, but deciding which camera to use may be overwhelming given the range of options.
At LotGuard, we have designed our mobile surveillance units specifically for parking lot security applications, and below, we list some of their key features and why they are so beneficial.
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High-Definition Video: Parking lots may be dark, and with vast areas to cover, crimes may occur far away from where your cameras are placed. Because of this, a high definition camera is critical to securing evidence of the required quality to aid law enforcement.
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Solar Power Options: It's wise to look for a supplier who can provide solar-powered cameras, as a fixed power supply may not be available where your cameras most need to be deployed. LotGuard's Surveillance Trailers and Pole Cameras both feature solar capability, allowing for autonomous deployment if required.
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Mobile and Rapid Deployment: LotGuard's mobile surveillance units offer plug and play capability so that they can be installed and provide instant security. Should your surveillance requirements change, they can be quickly relocated.
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LTE Connectivity: It's unlikely you will have cabled internet or Wi-Fi reaching out into your lots, so a self-contained surveillance device with built-in cellular video transmission technology is essential.
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Remote Access: Being able to access your surveillance cameras 24/7 from any device is essential. At LotGuard, we provide our mobile app and desktop viewing software as a license-free download, meaning you and your teams can access the cameras on demand at any time, from any device.
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Edge Recording Capability: Your parking lot surveillance cameras should do more than just live stream; they should store video for retrospective review and investigation. This should also be facilitated by local storage rather than using a device that off-loads video clips to the cloud. Utilizing edge-based (local) recording means you can access the footage you need much quicker, without any latency caused by third-party connections to the cloud.
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Infrared (Night Vision): Most parking lot crimes are likely to occur under cover of darkness, so your chosen security camera must have a powerful, smart IR function. LotGuard cameras can see up to 800ft even in total darkness, so there's nowhere to hide for criminals.
Do I Need Video Monitoring Services?
Remote video monitoring involves a team of security professionals actively monitoring the alerts from the surveillance cameras you install at your lots.
They will verify these alerts, and, if they are an active threat, they will initiate a remote crime prevention process that includes issuing an audio challenge, live voice down functionality, and even the dispatching of guards or local law enforcement.
But do you need this service? The presence of a surveillance camera is often enough of a deterrent to criminals, and if a crime does occur then, you have all the high-quality video evidence stored on the device.
The actual value of remote video monitoring is that it allows for crime prevention.
Suppose a surveillance camera does not deter a criminal; a voice down audio challenge from a remote operator informing them that law enforcement has been despatched will stop them in their tracks.
This prevents your lots and properties from being affected by damage or loss, meaning no rising insurance premiums and no aftermath to deal with.
Finally, remote monitoring service means no late-night call outs for you to deal with; you can rest easy knowing a team of security professionals are always awake, always on guard, and always protecting your lots.
Is Remote Video Monitoring Expensive?
Cost is a crucial consideration for many businesses. That is a significant reason why video surveillance cameras and remote monitoring services are becoming increasingly popular - they are significantly cheaper than utilizing security guards.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage of a security guard was $29,680 in 2019 — and that number goes up if you have to cover holiday periods or you want an armed guard.
A LotGuard unit, complete with video monitoring services, can offer savings of up to 85% compared with the cost of using a security guard.
There are, of course, pros and cons to using surveillance cameras vs guards beyond just the price point. At LotGuard, we would generally recommend a blended approach to security and suggest you augment the reach of existing guards with surveillance cameras.
Cameras make the work of guards more efficient, amplifying and enhancing their reach by giving them eyes on multiple areas around the parking lot.
Guards can even talk down to people in the lot through speakers while viewing them live on camera, letting them know they are being recorded.
Do I Need to Install a License Plate Recognition (LPR) Camera?
License plate recognition (LPR) cameras can significantly enhance your parking lot surveillance cameras.
They automatically scan the plates of all vehicles that enter or exit your lots (night or day, in all weather conditions) and link footage to the plate number of the vehicle recorded.
This allows users to identify every vehicle that enters and exits their parking lot and simplifies the process of access management.
An LPR camera can help you automate which vehicles can access your parking lots and make the process of identifying offenders much easier.
This two-fold benefit has made LPR cameras an extremely popular customization feature of the LotGuard camera range.
Do I Need an 'Intelligent' Camera?
Intelligent or 'smart' surveillance cameras can automatically analyze video surveillance footage with limited or zero human intervention.
LotGuard surveillance camera can be supplied with edge video analytics software that provides automated detection of intruders, loitering, vehicular violations and more, meaning cameras don't have to be continually monitored for activity.
The video analytics setup is easy to configure and allows users to create a virtual perimeter around their parking lots.
When the video analytics platform detects an intrusion, an alarm is raised either directly to the site manager or our partner monitoring station, who can take swift action to protect your lot.
We can even provide intelligent thermal analytics, which allows for advanced detection and classification.
Although not essential, video analytics may be highly beneficial in enhancing the effectiveness of your security cameras.
LotGuard: The USA's Leading Parking Lot Surveillance Cameras
LotGuard surveillance units are designed to provide parking lot and dealership security. They detect, deter, mitigate, and report criminal activity and provide 24/7 security.
The units feature built-in video analytics capable of detecting loitering and other criminal behavior. When coupled with our live video transmission, it enables remote crime prevention.
Every LotGuard has an HD infrared camera capable of recording crystal clear evidential images even in the lowest lighting conditions, allowing our remote operators to despatch law enforcement and capture usable video for review.
The PTZ cameras allow full site coverage, and we can provide LotGuards to your premises regardless of power availability.
We can customize the camera profile of LotGuard, so it meets the exact requirements of your lot.
This includes IR PTZ cameras, thermal cameras, license plate recognition cameras (LPR), and four-way multisensor cameras, all capable of delivering live and recorded footage through 4G LTE technology.
Reach out to our LotGuard team today to learn more.