Video surveillance: in the control tower of the 470 “eyes” of Toulouse
Toulouse’s network of cameras, which has continued to grow, now has 470 devices piloted from a center by municipal police officers.
The entrance to rue Alsace on the boulevard de Strasbourg side, the place du Capitole, the rue de Rémusat but also the place Micoulaud in Izards, the rue Jean-Moulin in Empalot, the avenue Saint-Expéry in the Pont-des-Demoiselles … On the wall formed by about thirty screens in the video PC of the municipal police, in an undisclosed location, the Pink City is displayed from all its angles, in color and with astonishing clarity, via a network that matters today 470 cameras. The arrival at the Capitol of Jean-Luc Moudenc in 2014 marked a turning point with the proliferation of devices in the city center and even in the suburbs. About a hundred more must be deployed by 2023, of which around thirty have already been deployed.
In the half-light of the room, it is not the video wall that the operators observe but, in front of it, the computer screen (s) in their office which reproduce the same images. In addition to the municipal police officers in charge of videotaping, there are the agents who have always been in charge of securing the city, the first of the missions of cameras called here videoprotection. For Emilion Esnault, deputy mayor in charge of security, their usefulness is no longer debated. It is they, he notes, which, even before an intervention, allow to see what is happening, to “remove the doubt” and “to control the intervention”, including for firefighters who can calibrate their means. . The cameras “also save lives” because the municipal police officers regularly observe discomfort on the public highway and can dispatch help. The city’s network is also increasingly used by the police for maintaining order, managing demonstrations or events that drain crowds. Finally, they remain taken by the investigation services which continued more and more on these images kept for 30 days. Their requisitions went from 1,800 in 2019 to 2,150 in 2021.