The problem the county faced was multi-facetted. First, the sheriffs did not have their own facility to house the impounded vehicles, and instead had to store them at local towing yards. Unfortunately the county was being billed for the storage, which cost on average $60,000 to $80,000 of taxpayers' money every month. Secondly, the only proposed storage area was 75 miles away from Thomasson's desk. In order for King County Sheriffs to use this area, Thomasson would have to find a way to monitor the site from the Emergency Dispatch Center.
After narrowing down his options to two different remote monitoring systems, Thomasson decided to test them to see which of the two would better fit the needs of the proposed sheriff's vehicle impound storage facility. One of the systems he tried was Alpha Systems Lab's RemoteWatch Pro digital video management system. Located in Irvine, Calif., Alpha Systems Lab is a security solution based manufacturer that provides advanced digital video monitoring systems.