Surveillance Camera Registration

Do you have a private video camera surveillance system at your residence or business in town. 

If so, the Scotts Valley Police Department would like to partner with you! The use of your system's footage may be of evidentiary value in the event that criminal activity is captured. In our ongoing effort to keep our neighborhoods safe, the Scotts Valley Police Department is working with the residents and businesses of our community to compile a list of privately owned video camera surveillance systems in an effort to aid criminal and other investigations.

Many residents and business owners have installed camera systems to monitor the activities around their properties. Many of these camera systems have cameras facing the front and sides of their properties. Increasingly, similar such camera systems have captured images that have been critical in solving crimes. 

The Scotts Valley Police Department is asking Scotts Valley residents and business owners with camera surveillance systems to, if possible, install and direct a camera to cover the front and/or sides of your property to capture the public street and sidewalk. 

In the event of a crime, investigators may contact you to determine if useful information was captured by your cameras. Captured footage may also be relevant to other types of non-criminal cases, such as Missing Persons cases. 

If you would like to help us make our community a safer place, please register your surveillance system with us by completing and submitting our registration form. This is a voluntary program, and the information provided to the Scotts Valley Police Department will not be shared among participants or outside parties. 

Surveillance System Registration Form

Thank you for helping us keep Scotts Valley safe! 

Helpful tips regarding your surveillance system:

• Regularly check the clock/time on your system to ensure it is correct, especially after daylight savings time or power outages.
• It is recommended that a surveillance system have the memory capacity to store at least several days of footage and have a resolution of at least 720p. However, less robust systems may still be helpful. NOTE: the larger the memory capacity and the higher the camera resolution, the better. We often find that surveillance cameras captured images of a suspect but, the image quality is too poor to be useful or the footage was gone because it had already been recorded over. 
• Be sure to review your system regularly (set reminders for yourself) to ensure it is working properly, to  make sure your cameras are properly aimed and to make sure the cameras are not obscured (spider webs, dust/dirt, vegetation etc.).

Please call the Scotts Valley Police Department at 831-440-5670 if you need any assistance completing your surveillance system registration.