PLANO, TX —Thanks to a unique capability of the WatchGuard DV-1 in-car video system, a prominent police department in Tennessee was able to make an arrest in a case involving the attempted murder of one of their officers. Nighttime video, automatically captured by one of their cruisers equipped with the WatchGuard DV-1, was used to identify the suspect vehicle’s license plate that lead police to a house in Carter County, Tennessee.
Background Recording
The incident involved a foot patrolman who attempted to question a suspicious driver departing from a local park. Shortly after a police backup vehicle arrived on the scene, the suspect rammed the backup vehicle and then ran into the foot patrolman who was dragged over 70 feet before being thrown from the car. Because the WatchGuard DV-1 includes both a DVD drive and an integrated hard drive for continuous background recording, this event was captured on the hard drive automatically, even though the WatchGuard DV-1 installed in the backup vehicle was never intentionally placed into a traditional recording mode. The hard drive video was later retrieved and analyzed which yielded a license plate number and a correct description of the vehicle type and color. The WatchGuard DV-1 is the only in-car video system on the market that could have captured this “unrecorded” critical video event. Thankfully, the officer is expected to make a full recovery. The suspect has been arrested and is now awaiting trial.
The Industry Benchmark
The WatchGuard DV-1 is the top selling digital in-car video system worldwide and is the industry’s most important and influential product. “When we began development of the DV-1 in 2002, a fundamental part of the product design was our dual drive redundant architecture, which enables features like background recording, automatic record overflow, and automatic DVD backups”, said Robert Vanman, President & C.E.O. of WatchGuard Video. “It has been very rewarding to learn of the dozens of incidents like this case in Tennessee where our unique product approach has proven to make a critical difference in the dangerous lives of law enforcement officers.”
About WatchGuard Video
WatchGuard Video, headquartered in Plano, Texas, is the nation’s leading law enforcement provider of digital in-car video systems. The company’s primary product is the WatchGuard DV-1 which records onto rewritable DVD-Video discs that play on regular DVD players. It is the only law enforcement product in the world that can create playable DVDs in a moving vehicle in real time.