Albuquerque Police Department: Integrating LPR data to solve cases faster

• The Albuquerque Police Department used license plate recognition (LPR) data in Peregrine to generate leads faster in an aggravated assault case and a sexual assault case. 

• Effective integration makes police data easier to understand and action — when tech providers are willing to fully integrate with third-party platforms. 

• Non-interoperable vendors can slow down investigations and create other long-term consequences in law enforcement.

The Albuquerque Police Department (APD) juggles dozens of tech platforms in its data ecosystem, including records management systems, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems, body-worn cameras, gunshot detectors, and LPR systems, to name a few. Before deploying a solution to integrate those platforms, APD analysts and detectives had to toggle between several source systems to manually gather information, draw connections between disparate data points, and generate reports or leads. 

APD onboarded Peregrine to unify and standardize data from more than 20 of its data sources in a single, integrated asset, complete with real-time data updates and advanced analytical capabilities. Peregrine has streamlined analysis, reporting, and lead generation for personnel across the agency, enabling APD to improve operations and close cases faster — including an aggravated assault case and a sexual assault case in 2024. However, the LPR platform used for the investigations doesn’t fully integrate with third-party systems such as Peregrine, which created extra steps for APD’s detectives. 

These cases illustrate both the power of effective data integration and the drawbacks of vendor lock-in in law enforcement, highlighting the industry’s growing need for open and interoperable technologies. 

Why does interoperability matter? 

A robust data integration and analytics solution equips law enforcement leaders with the right information to make their best decisions in their most critical moments. But for any agency to realize the full potential of data integration, the agency's source systems must be integration-friendly — that is, interoperable with third-party platforms. In law enforcement, where tech stacks are ever-growing and agencies are generating unprecedented amounts of data, interoperability is non-negotiable. 

To get the most out of their data and do their best work, public safety agencies must be able to access and move their information in bulk, at their discretion, or else face the long-term consequences of vendor lock-in and data fragmentation: hindered interagency collaboration, investigative slowdowns, expensive maintenance, and unclear data ownership. Still, some police tech vendors restrict their customer agencies from fully accessing and actioning their data. This is a growing problem in the law enforcement industry, particularly among LPR providers. 

Solving an aggravated assault case

“[Peregrine] probably cut the time in half in identifying the vehicle. —Investigator Dustin Shrouf, Albuquerque Police Department

One of APD’s LPR vendors limits some exchange of data with other providers’ systems, but it does allow users to query by partial plate numbers in a third-party platform. Here’s how that integration led to the identification of a suspect in an aggravated assault case last year. 

Identifying the associated vehicle 

Investigators at APD had obtained surveillance footage of a vehicle involved in an aggravated assault, but the footage only captured part of the vehicle’s license plate number. Investigators took that partial plate number to Peregrine, which allowed them to search it against police reports, CAD data, and LPR data simultaneously. 

The search returned a police report that matched the vehicle’s description and contained its full plate number. Because APD's LPR vendor does not allow certain data such as historical records and photos to integrate in third-party platforms, officers then had to pivot to the LPR platform to complete their investigation. 

Identifying the suspect 

Officers searched the suspect vehicle’s full plate number in the LPR system to find the vehicle’s history, which revealed that the car had been linked to two previous armed robbery cases. Investigators searched the armed robbery offenders in Peregrine and found that one of them matched the description provided by the aggravated assault victim. Officers later used a photo array to confirm the aggravated assault suspect’s identity. 

Instead of having to search through the agency’s LPR, CAD, and police report systems separately to find clues and manually draw connections, officers were able to identify the aggravated assault suspect with just a partial plate number and two data platforms, Peregrine and the LPR platform. 

After-action report 

“It probably cut the time in half in identifying the vehicle,” said Investigator Dustin Shrouf, who worked the aggravated assault case, about Peregrine. “I would have had to use two or three other sources to make that attempt to identify the vehicle and to make that connection to the prior case identifying the subject.” 

He added that being able to search multiple sources simultaneously in a data integration platform had become an integral part of APD's investigations. 

“If we didn’t have Peregrine, we could still do our job, but it would be difficult — maybe two or three times longer to make those connections and gather data,” Shrouf said. “If for any reason we had to do our jobs without Peregrine in the future, it would for sure be frustrating.” 

Still, had the LPR vendor practiced true interoperability and enabled a full replication of APD’s LPR database in Peregrine, officers may have identified both the vehicle and the suspect in just one platform, streamlining the investigation even more. 

Solving a sexual assault case 

“Peregrine is instrumental for plate searches, person searches, and as a one-stop shop for all of our data in one place." —Investigator Kevin Schlegel, Albuquerque Police Department

Investigators at APD were pursuing a sexual assault case in which the suspect drove a vehicle with a removed license plate. Officers were able to identify the suspect vehicle using only two data sources: an LPR system and Peregrine. 

Identifying the suspect 

Because the LPR system in question does not allow for the integration of vehicle description data, such as make and model, on third-party platforms, investigators had to search the suspect vehicle’s description in the LPR system to find a license plate number. From there, they pivoted to Peregrine, where they input the plate number and identified a suspect based on CAD records and police reports. 

Though the vehicle was not registered to the suspect, he had been documented as using the vehicle in previous incidents where he had not removed the license plate. Investigators confirmed the suspect’s identity with the agency’s sex crimes unit, then used Peregrine to find the suspect’s previous addresses, which eventually led to his arrest. 

After-action report 

Shrouf said the ability to search against multiple data sources at once made it faster and easier to generate leads in this investigation. 

“Being able to see any CAD linked to that one vehicle and any report linked to that one vehicle in one search set cuts time down in the research we have to do and has been more successful than having to use two, three, four, or more databases to try to identify the vehicle or get the vehicle history,” Shrouf said. “In this case, the vehicle history led us to who was using the vehicle.” 

Without Peregrine, officers would have had to manually search through several data systems, including the agency’s reporting and CAD systems, to find the evidence that helped them identify the suspect in this case — a process which would have been “nearly impossible,” according to Investigator Kevin Schlegel. 

“Peregrine is instrumental for plate searches, person searches, and as a one-stop shop for all of our data in one place,” Schlegel said. “Peregrine is something I use on a daily, almost hourly basis.” 

Similarly to the aggravated assault case, however, the LPR vendor’s non-interoperable practices added steps to the sexual assault investigation. If APD was able to integrate the full LPR dataset into Peregrine, investigators may have been able to identify the vehicle and suspect in one fell swoop, without context switching between the LPR platform and Peregrine. 

Interoperable police tech: Looking ahead

LPR systems and other modern technologies have the potential to revolutionize law enforcement and create safer communities across the U.S. and the world. But to truly maximize the value of these tech platforms, law enforcement leaders must be able to identify and prioritize the technology partners that respect agencies’ data ownership and practice true interoperability with third-party solutions. And when it comes to interoperability, the red flags aren’t always obvious — some vendors talk the talk in the beginning, but don’t walk the walk once the contract is signed. 

Leaders in public safety can protect their agencies and help move their industry forward by cutting through the noise, asking the right questions at the right time, and demanding a better data experience from their tech providers. To learn more about advocating for open data practices in law enforcement, download our e-book, “Own Your Data: Interoperability and the Risks of Vendor Lock-In.”