SDSO simplifies network complexity and enables innovation

SDSO strives to be a leader in creating and maintaining safe detention facilities by investing in healthcare, substance use treatment, community reentry, and ongoing improvements that deliver the best outcomes to the community.

SDSO wanted to expand the limited Wi-Fi in its seven detention facilities to enhance safety, including the use of body-worn cameras for deputy sheriffs, with a network modernization at its headquarters campus and over 90 remote locations to follow. But its network vendor didn’t have a suitable cloud-managed Wi-Fi option and instead suggested a design that added on-premises controllers to manage switches and wireless access points using legacy technology and architecture.

SDSO IT leadership recognized that the more complex and legacy architecture recommended by the incumbent networking vendor would be challenging to operate and maintain given their lean IT team and they instead decided to replace the legacy controller-based network with an AI-native, cloud-native networking platform.

SDSO is modernizing with Mist, starting with its detention facilities. With a full stack Juniper network, SDSO has a secure, FedRAMP-Authorized solution that manages wireless, wired, and SD-WAN under a shared Marvis^® AI engine and microservices cloud infrastructure.

SDSO has everything it needs to deploy infrastructure and onboard devices quickly and securely, operate easily, and realize lower TCO and OpEx. Deputies, administrative staff, and the incarcerated community have better digital experiences. SDSO is introducing innovative programs focused on workplace safety, medical and health, and data analytics enabled by Mist.

Delivering a good Wi-Fi experience in detention facilities can be particularly challenging due to their size; building materials like concrete, steel, and thick glass; and RF interference from other radio networks.

Mist Wi-Fi works smoothly and securely in these environments, allowing communication, operational, administrative, and medical applications to share the underlying infrastructure with educational and other applications used by incarcerated persons. With secure network segmentation, SDSO eliminated the need to buy and maintain a physically separate network for incarcerated persons, delivering additional CapEx and OpEx savings.

Robust Wi-Fi enabled the rollout of the body-worn cameras used by deputies, specialized units and supervisors, ultimately supporting the safety of the people in custody and those who work within the detention facilities and strengthening the relationship with the community by increasing accountability and trust.

 Speed evidence investigations with Mist location services
The Detention Services Bureau uses Mist location services to speed evidence gathering after an incident. The Bureau’s evidence management system has millions of records from its body-worn cameras—with 100,000 new records generated each month. Determining which videos were relevant to an incident that was previously determined to be non- evidentiary was time-consuming manual work.

SDSO uses Juniper Asset Visibility and the BLE capabilities of Juniper APs to determine the location of a body-worn camera at a specific date and time. The relevant video metadata is automatically tagged, allowing SDSO to associate evidentiary data that coincides with personnel and physical locations. Integration between body-worn cameras, the Mist platform, and the evidence management system significantly streamlines record identification and preservation.

“Tagging the videos with locations occurs seamlessly without any additional workload incurred by personnel,” said Lieutenant David Blackwell of SDSO’s Operational Technology Unit. “Investigators used to pour though hundreds of videos to locate relevant evidence for an investigation. This technology greatly enhances and streamlines this process for our personnel.”

 The Marvis AI Assistant wins MVP
The impact of Marvis^® AI on network reliability and IT support teams’ productivity is significant. With Marvis AI Assistant, concerns that a lean team couldn’t manage the larger network have evaporated. The staff is even taking on responsibilities they had previously offloaded, as trouble tickets and network issues dropped dramatically.

“Marvis AI Assistant is intuitive for the service desk and less experienced engineers,” said Fernandez. “It gives alerts and conditions that help less experienced engineers troubleshoot issues that previously would have required a more experienced engineer.”

 Better network visibility reduces trouble tickets
Since deploying the Mist platform, the network engineering team has seen 75% fewer escalated tickets.

The IT team has gained the unified network management they wanted for years. They have visibility across all the wired, wireless, and SD-WAN domains, and Mist’s smart dashboards provide the detailed information they need to keep the networks up and running. With Mist, they can minimize network downtime and disruptions and focus on delivering innovative technology solutions for public safety.