La Crosse police rolling out security camera network to area businesses

Police given access to business’ camera system

There are hopes that a new police security camera project will expand in La Crosse.  

So far, it’s just 360 Real Estate Solutions that’s signed on to Project Blue Light.

Essentially, it allows police access to a business surveillance camera system remotely through a network.

“The business owner can view it from their computers, their smartphones,” La Crosse asst. police chief Rob Abraham said. “They can view it from home. They can view it if they’re on their trip from China. 

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection.”

Only one business is taking advantage so far since, “we’ve been kind of low key, because we to verify it actually worked,” Abraham said. “We didn’t want to talk about a product that wasn’t successful.”

The Project Blue Light cameras are on the same network as the Safe Cam cameras that are keeping an eye on the streets of downtown La Crosse.

Abraham says the network could expand anywhere in the city through the new system and part of the hope is to expand the network so that surveillance seamlessly covers entire routes between downtown and the city’s college campuses.  

“If you’re going back and forth from the downtown area or the campus area after an evening of entertainment downtown, you could walk these routes and feel somewhat safe and secure that the cameras are there,” Abraham said.