The laws allowed for retail establishments to become licensed to sell cannabis products though they do so under the strict regulation of the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC). We are going to explore the requirements of surveillance systems in these locations. Below is the actually legal requirements set forth by California:
The surveillance requirements per Cal. Code Regs. tit. 4 § 15044
(a) Each licensed premises shall have a digital video surveillance system with a minimum camera resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels on the licensed premises. This requirement does not apply to a licensed premises authorized exclusively for cultivation activities or the cultivation area of a licensed microbusiness premises.(b) The video surveillance system shall at all times be able to effectively and clearly record images of the area under surveillance.(c) Each camera shall be permanently mounted and in a fixed location. Each camera shall be placed in a location that allows the camera to clearly record activity occurring within 20 feet of all points of entry and exit on the licensed premises, and allows for the clear and certain identification of any person and activities in all areas required to be filmed under subsection (d).(d) Areas that shall be recorded on the video surveillance system include the following:
(1) Areas where cannabis or cannabis products are weighed, packed, stored, loaded, and unloaded for transportation, prepared, or moved within the licensed premises;(2) Limited-access areas;(3) Security rooms;(4) Areas storing a surveillance-system storage device with at least one camera recording the access points to the secured surveillance recording area; and(5) Entrances and exits to the licensed premises, which shall be recorded from both indoor and outdoor vantage points.(e) Licensed retailers and licensed microbusinesses authorized to engage in retail sales shall also record point-of-sale areas and areas where cannabis goods are displayed for sale on the video surveillance system. At each point-of-sale location, camera placement must allow for the recording of the facial features of any person purchasing or selling cannabis goods, or any person in the retail area, with sufficient clarity to determine identity.(f) Cameras shall record continuously 24 hours per day and at a minimum of 15 frames per second (FPS).(g) The physical media or storage device on which surveillance recordings are stored shall be secured in a manner to protect the recording from tampering or theft.(h) Surveillance recordings shall be kept for a minimum of 90 calendar days.(i) Surveillance recordings are subject to inspection by the Department and shall be kept in a manner that allows the Department to view and obtain copies of the recordings at the licensed premises immediately upon request. The licensee shall also send or otherwise provide copies of the recordings to the Department upon request within the time specified by the Department.(j) Recorded images shall clearly and accurately display the time and date. Time is to be measured in accordance with the standards issued by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology. The displayed date and time shall not cover the view of recorded images in a manner that prevents the ready identification of any person or activity in the captured image.(k) The video surveillance system shall be equipped with a failure notification system that provides notification to the licensee of any interruption or failure of the video surveillance system or video surveillance-system storage device.(l) If multiple licensed premises are contained within the same building or on the same parcel of land, a single video surveillance system covering the entire building or parcel of land may be used by all of the licensees if all licensees have immediate access to the surveillance recordings to produce them pursuant to subsection (i). All licensees sharing a video surveillance system shall be held responsible and subject to discipline for any violations of the video surveillance requirements.(m) Notwithstanding subsection (a), a licensed distributor transport only licensee engaged in self-distribution whose premises is on the same parcel of land as their licensed cultivation premises shall not be required to comply with the provisions of this section.
Cal. Code Regs. Tit. 4, § 15044
1. Change without regulatory effect renumbering and amending former title 16, section 5044 to new title 4, section 15044 filed 7-14-2021 pursuant to section 100, title 1, California Code of Regulations (Register 2021, No. 29). For prior history of title 16, division 42, see Register 2019, No. 3. 2. Amendment filed 9-27-2021 as an emergency; operative 9-27-2021 (Register 2021, No. 40). This filing is a deemed emergency pursuant to Business and Professions Code sections 26013(b)(3) and 26153.1(k). A Certificate of Compliance must be transmitted to OAL by 3-28-2022 or emergency language will be repealed by operation of law on the following day. 3. Amendment refiled 3-28-2022 as an emergency; operative 3-28-2022 (Register 2022, No. 13). This filing is a deemed emergency pursuant to Business and Professions Code sections 26013(b)(3) and 26153.1(k). A Certificate of Compliance must be transmitted to OAL by 9-26-2022 or emergency language will be repealed by operation of law on the following day. 4. Certificate of Compliance as to 3-28-2022 order, including amendment of subsections (c), (j) and (l) and repealer of subsections (l)(1)-(2), transmitted to OAL 9-26-2022 and filed 11-7-2022; amendments effective 11-7-2022 pursuant to Government Code section 11343.4(b)(3) (Register 2022, No. 45).
Note: Authority cited: Section 26013, Business and Professions Code. Reference: Section 26070, Business and Professions Code.
1. Change without regulatory effect renumbering and amending former title 16, section 5044 to new title 4, section 15044 filed 7-14-2021 pursuant to section 100, title 1, California Code of Regulations (Register 2021, No. 29). For prior history of title 16, division 42, see Register 2019, No. 3. 2. Amendment filed 9-27-2021 as an emergency; operative 9/27/2021 (Register 2021, No. 40). This filing is a deemed emergency pursuant to Business and Professions Code sections 26013(b)(3) and 26153.1(k). A Certificate of Compliance must be transmitted to OAL by 3-28-2022 or emergency language will be repealed by operation of law on the following day. 3. Amendment refiled 3-28-2022 as an emergency; operative 3/28/2022 (Register 2022, No. 13). This filing is a deemed emergency pursuant to Business and Professions Code sections 26013(b)(3) and 26153.1(k). A Certificate of Compliance must be transmitted to OAL by 9-26-2022 or emergency language will be repealed by operation of law on the following day. 4. Certificate of Compliance as to 3-28-2022 order, including amendment of subsections (c), (j) and (l) and repealer of subsections (l)(1)-(2), transmitted to OAL 9-26-2022 and filed 11/7/2022; amendments effective 11/7/2022 pursuant to Government Code section 11343.4(b)(3) (Register 2022, No. 45).
Cal. Code Regs. tit. 4 § 15044
How to comply with these regulations
Resolution and Clarity:
The regulations are very specific about being able to clearly identify the persons and activities in the licensed premise. In order to be able to meet these regulations requires the use of higher resolution cameras than the minimum 1280x720 listed in §15044(a) and the placement of the cameras is very important.
In regards to the resolution of the camera, you need to understand the PPI (pixel per inch) and the DORI standards. In commercial security, cameras are rated in megapixels (MP) which is calculated by multiplying the horizontal and vertical resolutions. For example, a 5MP camera has a usable horizontal resolution of 2880 and vertical resolution of 1620 (2880 x 1620 = 4,665,600 pixels or 4.7MP). The number of pixels will not change regardless of the field of view, meaning a wide angle lens will result in a lower pixel per inch than a narrow angle lens. This is because the pixels are more spread out on the wide angle lens than they are on the narrow angle. The result is that the narrower the angle the higher the PPI which simply means that narrow angle will allow you to see more detail in the image. Increasing the resolution of the camera will directly increase the PPI such as an 8MP camera which has 8,294,400 pixels at 3840x2160 resolution allowing for a wider angle lens to be used while still retaining a high PPI and that leads us into DORI Distance.
DORI is a standard that uses the pixel per inch, lens angle, and distance to be able to detect, observe, recognize, or identify (D.O.R.I.) a person. Uniview does the work for you by providing this information in their specification sheets.
Going back to the 5MP camera from before, this DORI table would look like this:
DORI Distance
Lens (mm)
Detect (m)
Observe (m)
Recognize (m)
Identify (m)
2.8
63.0
25.2
12.6
6.3
4.0
90.0
36.0
18.0
9.0
Versus a 8MP cameras
DORI Distance
Lens (mm)
Detect (m)
Observe (m)
Recognize (m)
Identify (m)
2.8
86.9
34.8
17.4
8.7
4.0
124.1
49.7
24.8
12.4
Using the DORI charts, you can see that a 5MP camera with a 2.8mm lens is able to identify people from up to 20 feet away which is the maximum distance that a camera can be mounted from an entry or exit according to §15044(c).
The thing to take away from this is that a 1280x720 resolution camera meets the requirements of §15044(a) but will need to be extremely close or have a very narrow field of view to be able to comply with §15044(c). We recommend not using less than 4MP (2560x1440) to avoid running into issue with clarity.
Frames per Second (FPS) and Data Retention
§15044(f) states that all cameras must record 24/7 and have a minimum of 15 frames per second. Recording continuously is actually the standard recording mode on commercial NVR (network video recorders) and is not a problem for any professional security recorder. Frames per second is a measure of how many image snapshots are taken every second by the camera, the higher the FPS the more snapshots are taken resulting in smoother video. We don't sell any camera that cannot record at least 15fps, most record 20-30fps in their full resolution.
§15044(h) states that you need to retain surveillance footage for a minimum of 90 calendar days. This part can be tricky if you do not have a modern NVR and IP camera system because it requires a combination of advanced video compression algorithms and a large storage capacity in the NVR. Video compression is a broad topic but I will only briefly discuss it to save both time and attempt to not bore you.
As stated previously, each frame is a snapshot and if you are familiar with JPEG images then you know that the file size can be pretty large (2MB or more) for a high resolution picture. NVRs support MJPEG which is simply the video format version of JPEG images and the file size is huge. In order to combat this file size, the video compression standard called H.264 was implemented into surveillance video which caused a massive reduction in file size. Without getting into details of H.264, this change reduced the file size without very much video image degradation. H.264 was replaced several years ago with H.265 which had better prediction algorithms and used much less bandwidth with superior video quality.
Uniview takes this a step further with their U-Code advance video compression technology that is capable of reducing even H.265 video file size by up to 95%. Now you can have very large camera systems in place and still easily retain 90 days of storage through a combination of U-Code, large capacity security hard drives, and NVRs that support up to 24 hard drive bays. We have systems in place that are recording 24/7 and retaining 1 year of storage.
On-Screen Display of Date & Time and Storage Failure Notification
Referring back the requirements, part §15044(j) states "recorded images shall clearly and accurately display the time and date" in accordance to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology. This means that you cannot simply set the time manually in the NVR and not all NVR allow you to use NTP servers to keep the time accurate. Fortunately, our Uniview NVRs allow for the use of NTP servers to prevent your time/date stamp for becoming inaccurate. The NTP server can be setup and you can then decide how often you want the time updated (30 minutes by default). The NVR can then time-sync all connected Uniview IP cameras to ensure your compliance.
The OSD (on-screen display) can be customized to show the date & time as well as the camera name and all of the overlays can be moved to a location on the screen that does not inhibit your ability to clearly record video.
Uniview NVRs can also be setup to send you an email upon any errors in the storage system to keep you compliant with §15044(k). The process only requires you to setup a SMTP service in the NVR which can be done in the network menu. Most email providers have all of the necessary inform for doing this available on their website.
Conclusion
Uniview's surveillance cameras will provide you with clear video images that easily meet the resolution and frame rate requirements. Uniview's NVR will allow you to meet the storage retention goals, can easily configure the OSD, and will provide active alerts in case of a storage failure or error. Overall Uniview's products are a great fit for these types of scenarios and we would be glad to work with your team in designing a security system today.
Please note: this is not legal advice, only our interpretation of the requirements set forth in Cal. Code Regs. tit. 4 § 15044. Always seek out legal advice from a qualified lawyer to ensure that you are in compliance with the laws.
