LiveU Helps LAPD Serve Its Community With Live Streaming

By Jim Bask 1 Comment March 5, 2018  case-study, Cellular Bonding, liveu, solo, solo hdmi, video encoding

There are more than four million people in Los Angeles that the Los Angeles Police Department is tasked with serving and many get their news and information from social media platforms and not as much from traditional news outlets. Reaching citizens on these platforms became a key goal for the LAPD, with the task falling primarily to the head of the Social Media Unit of the Media Relations Division, Sergeant Hector Guzman.

In the past, the LAPD had no method of its own to disseminate video of press conferences or emergency related alerts, instead needing to rely on local media outlets to help spread the word. The arrival of Public Information Director Josh Rubenstein—who came to the department from one of LA’s media outlets—set the goal to change that through live streaming.

At first, Guzman and his unit of officers would use their city-issued smartphones to stream video to platforms like Facebook Live or Periscope. However, Guzman quickly realized that there were a lot of limitations that came with a cell phone being the primary tool for live streaming. …

“The officers that work in my unit—that’s myself and four officers—we’re not the most techie people in the world,” he said. “We’re not trained professional videographers, per se, we’re police officers. So we needed something that was simple to use. [The LiveU Solo was] something I was able to train officers in my unit literally like in five minutes how to use the equipment and they were up and running.”

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