TOWSON, Md. – This week, Baltimore County lifted the curtain on its new $3.7 million video surveillance network that will cover all of the county’s elementary schools. The system upgrade was in reaction to the shooting that injured a student inside Perry Hall High School on the first day of classes in 2012, WBALTV reports.

“We talk about academics for BCPS, but if the safety aspect is not there for our students and families, nothing else will, in fact, matter,” said county schools Superintendent Dallas Dance.

The new One View system was unveiled at the Police Command Center, where officers demonstrated how they can get live video feeds from Riverview Elementary School in Halethorpe and Scotts Branch Elementary School in Randallstown.

All of the county’s 107 elementary schools now have the security cameras. The new system gives police and school resources officers direct access to real-time school surveillance cameras. The system includes at least three strategically placed cameras per school.

Officers are able to access the cameras from multiple devices to pull up a floor plan of the school, select the camera or cameras that they wish to access and view real-time video on up to six cameras on a single device, enabling them to watch, in succession, a person from the time they enter the school to the time they get to the office.

Of the $3.7 million spent on the project, $1 million came from speed camera revenue, while the rest came from the general fund of the county budget, county officials said.

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