:format(webp))
A real-time crime center (RTCC) is a powerful public safety platform. This network of technologies and data feeds has gained significant ground since 2005, when the New York Police Department built the first one in the United States. Outfitted with satellite imaging and mapping, a wall of screens and operators on constant standby, that system helped law enforcement solve crimes more quickly, respond to urgent situations with greater preparedness, and keep both civilians and officers safe. Since then, RTCCs have grown in both capabilities and potential.
Today's RTCC solutions are more intuitive, more effective, and more affordable, allowing agencies of any size to leverage video surveillance, real-time positioning, live alerts and more. Where an RTCC once required a dedicated physical command center and constant monitoring by staff, modern solutions can be accessed in the field by the officers who need them most.
The best real-time crime centers leverage both community participation and public safety technology to cast the widest possible net when gathering information and employ automation to highlight what matters. This guide will teach you and your agency how to build and leverage a real-time crime center to accelerate justice and protect the public.
Let's get started.
What is a real-time crime center?
A real-time crime center is a centralized technology-driven unit within a police department designed to provide real-time information and analytics to support law enforcement operations and investigations.
The RTCC takes in information from a vast pool of sources, including CCTV, BWC, geolocation data, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR), alert sources like shot detection or alarm systems, and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) software.
It then distributes the most useful information to officers to aid incident response and, by centralizing information sources, investigations. Officers are empowered to review all the digital evidence resources in the department’s array, helping them solve crimes more quickly.
Smaller agencies may be tempted to think that an RTCC is only worth building at large agencies, but technology today allows agencies to start small and build up over time.
The widespread implementation of RTCCs has led to impressive results for many agencies. According to Lieutenant Clifford Hagan of the West Palm Beach Police Department, "In probably half our homicides, the major investigative leads have been generated through the real-time crime center, either through the real-time video or through [license plate recognition] hits off of those systems.”
How does a real-time crime center improve public safety?
Public safety begins well before crimes take place. For example, vulnerable civilians such as the elderly can often find themselves lost, and their families frantic to find them. That's precisely what had happened one night in Atlanta when, in the early morning hours, a 74-year-old woman wandered out of the home she shared with her niece. Searches of the immediate area came up empty, so the Atlanta police called on transit police in the area for additional support.
Using the Axon Fusus RTCC in her patrol car for the first time, one Atlanta officer began scrolling through surveillance cameras in the area within hours of the initial call for service. She quickly identified the missing woman as she walked down a nearby street and boarded a bus. The officer noted the bus number and relayed that info to the transit police, who then tracked the vehicle down, patrolled its route and found the woman on the sidewalk. The missing woman was reunited with her niece, and everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief.
The real-time crime center made it far easier for officers to find the relevant cameras, comb through their footage and get a lead on their missing person. For more on this case example, watch Fusus Presents Holistic Public Safety: Building A Unified Real-Time Crime Center:
These features work just as well when solving crimes, especially when field-deployed RTCCs such as FUSUS combine with support officers back at the station. While officers chase down leads in the field, RTCC operators can collect additional surveillance video, retrieve crucial information on suspects, and relay that info both to officers on the street and to neighboring jurisdictions.
If the situation is ongoing, the RTCC can help restore peace more rapidly. When a gunman opened fire in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, in May 2023, police rushed to bring the suspect to justice.
Officials said the shooter spent about two minutes at the scene of the shooting before leaving on foot and stealing an unattended pickup truck at a nearby gas station. Around 20 minutes later, cameras identified the truck's tag number and placed the suspect in Cobb County. The department's new real-time crime center highlighted that info and distributed it to both the Atlanta Police and Cobb County officers.
At a press conference, Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer said that as calls of potential sightings poured into the station, the operators in the real-time crime center fielded them and determined which seemed legitimate. When one came in that seemed particularly credible, an operator flagged it, and dispatch was able to send immediate reinforcements.
Chief VanHoozer credits the RTCC and the license plate camera system with helping to bring the suspect to justice without further injuries. "Those tools are what really got us the clues that we needed to make this successful," he said.
How does a real-time crime center improve officer safety?
Before officers arrive at the scene of an incident in progress, the RTCC can equip them with critical details that make it easier to perform effectively. If a suspect has been identified, the RTCC can supply background information, such as prior arrests, giving officers an idea of the danger level on the call.
Whether it’s a domestic dispute, simple shoplifting, or crowd control, foreknowledge can improve police outcomes. The RTCC can also pull up CAD information, blueprints, and photos of the area to give officers a preliminary lay of the land, illustrating potentially dangerous places and highlighting a safe approach angle.
Imagine an officer responding to a call for service. She has no knowledge of the persons of interest or their prior arrests – unless she has access to real-time information. The system can provide background info on those at the scene pulled from arrest records and CAD information, supplying additional pertinent details of the situation.
When the officer arrives, she quickly finds herself in an on-foot pursuit. Suppose she is unfamiliar with the area and doesn’t have time to note the suspect's clothing or tattoos. Fortunately, she activated her body-worn camera (BWC) before engaging, which allows the RTCC operator to watch the live stream and pull those identifying details in real-time.
That operator then deploys a drone as a first responder in the area to maintain eyes on the fleeing suspect. When the suspect ducks into a building, the RTCC operator retrieves blueprints to note exits and danger points. The operator combines those plans with maps of the surrounding area to provide tactical guidance to the officer in pursuit. As a result, the officer is able to safely and effectively navigate during the chase and catch the suspect before they escape.
Location services powered by BWC or smartphones can help the RTCC track the officers movement with real-time GPS information. Real-time operators can use this info to send reinforcements to precise locations at the drop of a hat, without even needing additional input from an officer giving chase or engaged in an altercation. All of these work together to help keep officers safe and apprehend the suspect
Here is a real world example: In the course of a pursuit, officers from the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office in Michigan were forced to abandon their vehicle and follow suspects into dense forestry, just as night fell. In the scramble to keep up, the officers had left their phones in the car, but they did have their Axon Body 3 cameras.
When it became clear the pursuit had failed, these officers found themselves caught in a new challenge: navigating out of the woods in pitch black. Rescue efforts coordinated by Sergeant Stephen Beers were floundering. The woods were so thick they could not hear a siren less than 300 yards away.
Luckily, Sergeant Beers was able to use real-time location data from the Body 3 cameras to locate the officers. By tapping into the live feeds from those cameras, he was then able to guide the officers to a rescue team, bringing them in just before they would have been forced to spend the night in the wilderness.
KCSO sheriff Rick Fuller had this to say: “[Chiefs and sheriffs] are responsible for the safety of their people and making sure they’re going home at night. You never know when that swamp’s going to be there, you never know when that big, thick forest is going to be there, you never know what circumstances are going to lead you to need this technology – and when you have it, it’s a lifesaver.”
How to build a real-time crime center
Building a real-time crime center doesn't need to begin with an enormous upfront investment. Because its primary purpose is to centralize the many technologies your department already uses, it can start with just one piece of RTCC software running on a single computer. With a cloud-based solution such as Axon Fusus, your department won't even need a dedicated worker on that computer – officers will be able to access the RTCC from their patrol cars, keeping staffing overhead low.
In an ideal world, every agency would start with a fully funded and fully staffed real-time crime center, but in the real world we know these things sometimes take time.
As the system accumulates wins for the department, you'll likely find it easier to expand its budget. That can mean building out a small physical RTCC with one or two staffers. Different agencies have taken different approaches. Some have hired full-time operators, others have provided RTTC access to their dispatchers, some have given injured-officers time to recover by working the RTTC others have gone for a combination of these solutions. However you expand, doing so will take some of the pressure off officers in the field and unlock the additional benefits of a second set of eyes.
One solution is to follow guidance from the Department of Justice and task some staffers with multiple responsibilities. The DOJ recommends agencies "devote considerable time to developing job descriptions and position responsibilities/duties that are consistent with the number of man-hours that will be assigned to the RTCC functions."
If roles are clearly defined and staff are well-trained, those from other departments that have downtime can tag into the RTCC when necessary. Alternatively, RTCC-specific staff can slot into different support roles — doing background work for other detectives and investigators, identifying and distributing info and evidence for active investigations and so on.
Key components of a real-time crime center
Bay County Real-Time Operations Center
There are two primary components of a real-time crime center: the many data pipes that provide information, and the single-pane of glass that brings all that data into a central, easy to understand location.
Single-pane of glass
Real-time crime centers bring together data from many different connected devices, and an effective solution will allow you to view all this data on a “single-pane of glass.” Think of this a model as the “foundation of your house.” Having a unified interface is critical because is allows agencies to leverage all of their solutions to the fullest potential.
So what exactly does this look like in practice? Many agencies will have their BWC feeds, LPR hits, and drone feeds all as layers on map-based interface all while an incident is unfolding. Furthermore, agencies will leverage AI in various ways, whether it be to automate searches, tasks, etc, that streamline response. Again, in the interest of efficiency, this is all utilized within the context of a single system.
Axon Fusus is an excellent example of this single-pane of glass technology. By prioritizing an open-ecosystem that pulls data from countless sources, it has earned its position as the most widely used and trusted real-time crime center platform for law enforcement.
So, what kind of data can be viewed or analyzed in this single-pane of glass? Let’s explore the different data pipes.
Data pipes
Another important avenue to consider as you build our a real-time crime center: data pipes.
Police cameras like Axon Body 4, Fleet 3, and Axon Air are a great place to start, but the more information fed into the real-time crime center, the better. Gunshot detection, ALPR, CAD information, Internet of things applications, floor plans and a public tip line can all further empower the RTCC.
A community camera registry may be the most significant data improvement possible for the system. Consider the city of Atlanta, where over 40,000 cameras are either registered or integrated for its population of 506,811. It would cost the city over $248 million to deploy that many cameras, but instead they are able to access existing cameras.
If your department can partner with business owners and other private citizens to volunteer their cameras for use in crime prevention and evidence gathering, you can exponentially improve your RTCC coverage. If sign-up is easy and the RTCC demonstrates sufficient results, the number of community cameras in the registry will rise accordingly, creating a virtuous cycle of bringing more cameras in and raising RTCC effectiveness.
Another data pipe to consider is RapidSOS, which provides users 24/7 instant access to a safety agent who can coordinate an emergency response using data from a community member’s device without the need for a phone call. Its Connect service allows it to integrate into devices, apps, and sensors using a scalable and straightforward API, giving users a secure way to get critical information to police as soon as an emergency situation arises.
Dedrone provides counter-drone and unmanned aircraft technology, including tools that automatically detect drones and send text and email alerts to chosen parties. Those alerts can also be viewed inside Axon Fusus, and they include drone models, serial numbers, and maps that track detected drones and their pilots in real-time, making it easy to secure airspace.
There are countless other data pipes that can enrich your RTCC. Click here for a list of those with Fusus interoperability.
As a whole, the more your agency uses a real-time crime center, the more success stories it will accumulate, and the more you’ll be able to justify an additional budget allocation that maximizes protection for officers and the community.
You can also learn more about building the next generation of real-time crime centers in this whitepaper.
What comes next?
If you’re interested to learn how a real-time crime center might benefit your law enforcement agency, Axon is here to help. As one of the leading real-time information sources, Axon Fusus centralizes all the information your agency has at its command, making it easy for officers to get the intel they need. As with all Axon solutions, Axon Fusus also works seamlessly with the rest of the Axon Ecosystem.
An effective real-time crime center can lead to faster response times, safer officers, and safer communities. Get in touch today for a free demo.