When I teach property and evidence management to local departments in New Jersey, one of the first questions I ask is, "How many of you have $10,000 to spend on property and evidence management?" Believe it or not, occasionally, one hand goes up. I continue my line of questioning by reducing the amounts and a majority of departments have about $200.00 they can squeak out of their budget.

The interview continues with the next question, "How many of you have an alarm system on your property storage facility?" Most hands go up. "How many of you have video surveillance of the inside of your storage facility?" A hand or two might go up. I ask the others why they don't have video surveillance and the unanimous answer is money.

I checked a few sources and found that a time lapse video tape recorder and a video camera setup that would monitor the inside of the property room would cost at least five hundred dollars for a basic unit and the prices go skyward from there. With most departments, spending that much money on the property room is out of the question.

There is a lower cost answer to this dilemma.

I recently purchased a Logitech 3000 "webcam" camera to use for video conferencing and sending video e-mails. The total cost was under $100.00. In the included software is a program called "Motion Detector". It is very simple to use. You set the camera to point at the area you want monitored and set the software sensitivity level. The program runs in the background and whenever it detects motion in the field of view of the camera, it starts to record. A video file is created on the computer. I have mine pointed at the entrance door to the property room. It starts recording when the door opens and continues to record until it no longer detects any motion. The average movie clip is about 3-5 seconds long and takes up about 200kb on the hard drive. The sole purpose of the system is to record any unauthorized entrances and there have been none since putting the system in place. It does, however, record the first employee to arrive and the last to leave for the day. The system is turned off during normal business hours. These extraneous files are periodically deleted so they don't clutter the hard disk.

I am only familiar with the Logitech camera I have, but there are many "webcam" cameras on the market available in a variety of price ranges. A little research could go a long way to increase the security of your property room.