• Real-time crime centers (RTCCs) streamline operations, improve situational awareness, and enhance officer safety for law enforcement agencies.
• Building an RTCC is no small investment, but when done correctly, it pays off for agencies and their communities.
• Ensure your RTCC’s success by starting small, planning strategically, finding the right data integration platform, and quantifying wins.

Real-time crime centers are an increasingly popular investment for law enforcement agencies faced with staffing shortages and higher workloads. By centralizing intelligence and enhancing situational awareness for field officers, RTCCs can help improve officer safety, reduce response times, and ensure efficient resource allocation.

But setting up a successful RTCC is a time-consuming and expensive process. Agencies must first determine their priorities, create policies, get city or county approval, acquire funding, and invest in new technology. And since each agency has its own priorities and budget, there isn’t a single path to success.

Today’s agencies benefit from the success stories, cautionary tales, and learned experience of pioneers in real-time operations. In a recent Police1 webinar, Lt. Justin Elliott of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) and Sgt. Chris Mastroianni of the Hartford Police Department (HPD) shared their insights from years of refining their RTCCs.

For agencies looking to start an RTCC or optimize their current operations, here are six tips for increasing RTCC efficiency.

1. Define the RTCC’s role in your agency’s operations

An RTCC can’t be effective without a clear plan. Lt. Elliot started building the SCSO’s real-time operations by drafting the agency’s goals, missions, and vision for how it would support other departments.

“It's pretty daunting at first, when you're looking at not only building something new, but you're adding it to your people's already full-time jobs,” Lt. Elliot said. “I started just putting pen to paper, and that allowed us to get that approval and secure seed funding so that we knew what our left and right parameters were going to be, based on funding, based on staff, and what our scope was.”

Rather than treating the RTCC as a siloed department, Lt. Elliot considered how it could embed into all of the agency’s operations. He consulted a long list of stakeholders — including legal, purchasing, grants, contractors, and command staff — to get input, increase engagement, and solidify buy-in.

For public safety leaders designing RTCCs for their own agencies, foundational questions to consider include:

• What staffing model suits your agency’s culture and budget?
• What funding sources can you tap into?
• What key metrics can you track to demonstrate success?
• Where will the RTCC be housed?

2. Start small and invest wisely

The HPD’s RTCC all started in the backseat of a Chevy Tahoe, Sgt. Mastroianni said. Using a couple of laptops, a single analyst leveraged small camera deployments, a gunshot detection system, and social media for real-time intelligence. After the HPD proved the value of a potential RTCC, the city allowed the HPD to build its full-fledged operation, which now staffs 14 people.

“Please don't get discouraged that you don't have the manpower or the room or the money,” Sgt. Mastroianni said. “Just start somewhere. Start doing something to support investigations and officers out in the field, and just chip away and build from there.”

At the beginning stages, it’s crucial to build a strong foundation on reliable technology. For real-time operations, that means building for connectivity. Avoid wasting money on empty tech solutions that don’t fit into your process, Sgt. Mastroianni advised. Rather than buying impractical, siloed solutions, invest in vendors that work well together and will grow with you.

3. Get a common operating picture

"Our real-time crime center operators have so many systems being pushed in front of them, and they need to find and pass along information that's critical to the officers and investigators in the moment. When they make the right decision, they're increasing that decision intelligence, and they're helping us eliminate mistakes across the board.” —Lt. Justin Elliot, Spokane County Sheriff's Office

RTCC analysts leverage dozens of data sources, including automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems, camera feeds, gunshot detection systems, and agency-specific data. If those systems don’t communicate with each other, an analyst is left clicking through multiple screens to uncover mission-critical information. But in real-time operations, every minute counts.

Data integration platforms make RTCC analysts’ jobs possible by pulling together all of these disparate data sources into a single pane of glass. Rather than sorting through siloed sources, integrated platforms deliver relevant information in context, allowing analysts to decipher and disseminate actionable insights in seconds.

"Our real-time crime center operators have so many systems being pushed in front of them, and they need to find and pass along information that's critical to the officers and investigators in the moment,” Lt. Elliot said. “When they make the right decision, they're increasing that decision intelligence, and they're helping us eliminate mistakes across the board.”

4. Plan for intelligence flow

Agencies often miss the next piece: actually getting those insights to field officers in a format they can use. For example, say an RTCC analyst identifies a hit-and-run suspect in a white Honda Accord. They can alert a nearby officer via radio, but that isn’t as useful as sending them a video of the vehicle in question. Pushing out media via Slack, Teams, or a shared mobile platform is far more effective.

“We're always sharpening that saw with representatives from dispatch, patrol, etc.,” Lt. Elliot said. “Deciding how these various types of information will be shared in specific instances is critical. If you ignore this, your operation is ripe for conflict across different groups.”

Agencies can mitigate this problem by planning ahead, clearly defining every participant’s role, and developing standard operating procedures tailored to their specific goals. These policies shouldn’t be too broad or too complicated, Lt. Elliot said, but they need to exist.

5. Layer your training strategy

RTCCs still need constant calibration: refining intelligence flow, exploring new tech solutions, and onboarding new hires. But there isn’t one “how-to course” for building an RTCC, Sgt. Mastroianni said. His agency relies heavily on peer-to-peer training, pairing more experienced analysts with new employees. Civilian analysts are encouraged to attend patrol roll calls and go on ride-alongs, too.

But that training needs to go both ways, Sgt. Mastroianni said. There may be distrust between sworn personnel and civilian analysts, or veteran officers may be hesitant to adopt new technology. But for an RTCC to work, on-the-ground officers must learn how to trust, receive, and act on information from analysts.

To encourage buy-in, “layer your messaging in every manner that you can,” Lt. Elliot said. Appoint leaders in each department to test out new technology and roll it out to their team. Peer adoption and shared wins are some of the most powerful ways to encourage buy-in.

6. Measure your success

Tracking and publicizing an RTCC’s success helps boost morale, build relationships between sworn personnel and civilian analysts, and increase trust with your community.

“We’re trying to change our culture, we’re trying to leverage technology, and we’re trying to get that buy-in from everyone,” Sgt. Mastroianni said. “And one of the best ways you can do that is to measure your success, which we do here really well with data.”

Sgt. Mastroianni wanted to “create solvability” with the HPD’s RTCC. To prove the operation’s effectiveness, he started tracking which crimes were solved using cameras, surveillance, and real-time technology. Initially, he created a weekly report for command staff. But now, he uses a tool that highlights the RTCC’s impact in real time.

“We actually have our task tracker feeding into live dashboard visuals,” Sgt. Mastroianni said. “At any moment, you go in and see how many tasks we did this week or last month. We can bring it down into activity type: Was it video calls, LPR, social media? And then we can bring it down into crimes: What type of crimes?”

Demonstrate wins through data to highlight your RTCC’s successes. Even better, present that data on a dynamic, interactive platform to allow command staff and personnel to explore it on their own. Data-driven insights can back up tangible results and even support advocacy for more funding.

Power your RTCC with Peregrine

With proper planning, technology, and personnel, RTCCs can be effective at any size. Data integration platforms like Peregrine power RTCCs by pulling in disparate data sources; ingesting, integrating, cleaning, and harmonizing that data; providing valuable context for critical information; and delivering actionable insights. Peregrine enables even resource-constrained and short-staffed agencies to launch successful real-time operations that drive immediate impact for community safety.

To learn more about how to maximize your RTCC’s efficiency and ensure your real-time operations align with your agency’s goals, watch the full Police1 webinar.