Air Support Unit
The Challenge
London’s Metropolitan Police is tasked with securing the streets of Greater London. With a large population of nine million disparately dispersed over a congested area, this can be an extremely challenging task. When a critical incident occurs, the speed and effectiveness of response is vital to ensure public safety.
The Solution
Vislink downlink solutions enable the Met Police to share, distribute and record footage between aerial, surface and maritime fixed and mobile units, enabling more unified collaboration, more efficient use of resources and faster, better decision-making. For example, when a firearms incident occurs and a Met Police team has to enter a location to make necessary arrests and safeguard the area, the command unit can use real-time images and video footage to assess the threat, keep officers updated, and relay critical information to support services such as ambulances on standby to treat possible casualties. Everyone knows what is happening – now and next.
The Result
Vislink equipment is now a standard part of every public order deployment for the Met Police. In addition to critical incidents, the solutions play a central role in a wide variety of everyday policing requirements – improving surveillance and crowd control at major public events, simplifying traffic management, enabling better collection of evidence for criminal investigations, and many other applications. Vislink downlink and handheld applications also overcome the barrier of blind-spots and video freezing in metropolitan areas. This has had a significant effect on resources, saving money and allowing officers to be used more efficiently – all crucial in making London a safer city.
“The ability to downlink live imagery from a helicopter to our ground units is the single most important piece of equipment we have. These high-quality images provide commanders with critical intelligence from the comfort of the screen in their control room or HQ. They can deploy the right operational staff to the right place at the right time.”
Inspector Richard Brandon Unit Executive Officer, Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit
