Making Bojaca Safer

Bojaca is a small town in Colombia, 30km away from the capital city of Bogota. It is a prominent religious destination for Colombians, as it is home to a historic Catholic monument that is so well visited that the population can increase up to six times on a typical Sunday — becoming one of the biggest economic factors in Bojaca. In recent years, the town had started to fight against rising crime in the area — prominently drug trafficking and cattle theft — but it failed to tackle it due to its poor existing network of closed circuit security cameras which operated on a fibre optic network.

The Bojaca government recognized that it needed a solution without necessarily spending a big part of its budget, a solution that would enable it to remotely monitor the town via CCTV cameras, prevent crime and use the video feeds as solid evidence to convict criminals. Bojaca turned to InfiNet’s partner in Colombia, Maicrotel, a leading communication solutions provider who installs and manages turn-key video monitoring solutions for the police force.

Maicrotel and InfiNet Wireless deployed a network which could carry IP cameras — some fixed and some pan tilt zoom (PTZ) — in six initial important sites of Bojaca. Initially, four existing cameras were moved across to a new wireless platform based on the InfiMAN point-to-multipoint solution, ideal for city-wide or regional transmission and access networks, with the option to install more cameras in the future. Other existing cameras were re-deployed using the InfiLink point-to-point solution as they were in locations out of the 90° coverage of the InfiMan solution.

It was also agreed with the local government that solar energy would be used to allow the cameras and radio to work autonomously, i.e. not necessarily relying on the existing but unreliable national energy grid network, as well as allowing cameras to be installed in remote and isolated places where little else exists except for the crossroads, allowing police to monitor all vehicles leaving and entering the town.

Not only was the deployment of the InfiNet Wireless solution straightforward and saved significant costs for the Bojaca government, it also allowed the implementation of a 24/7 monitoring solution, including video recording which can now be used as evidence. The solution has also contributed to finding and capturing criminals, including people involved in supplying drugs nearby schools and posing a serious risk to children and local communities.

The Bojaca police now have all eyes on the CCTV in the town and are able to check all videos to prevent crime and pinpoint exact crime scenes in order to dispatch to the nearest police officers, thus providing a safer environment for its citizens and visitors alike.

“Despite Bojaca town being a busy tourist spot in Colombia, we previously had terrible experience with our legacy fibre optic infrastructure. It was expensive to deploy, cameras were fixed and impossible to move to other parts of the town. To make things worse, criminals would often steal or even cut the cables, causing extra expenses for us and complete loss of the CCTV monitoring service provided by the police force. Maicrotel’s design and installation, along with InfiNet’s local support in Colombia, has allowed the law enforcement agencies to extend the area they can monitor efficiently and reliably from the main control rooms. The entire town of Bojaca is now monitored 24/7 and criminals are caught quicker than ever thanks to InfiNet and its local partner Maicrotel,” said Juan Carlos Gaitan, Bojaca Mayor.