The need for real-time crime information hits home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2005, on a day the local press would call “the saddest day,” John Hyde – in a downward spiral of paranoid schizophrenia – went on a rampage, shooting and killing five people over an 18-hour period. Two of those killed were police officers sent to the man’s residence to take him for a mental health evaluation. Both officers, Richard Smith and Michael King, had recently rejoined the Albuquerque Police Department after a brief retirement, both wanting to return to serving the community.
The suspect – now locked away in the state mental institution – remains deemed incompetent to stand trial in the killings.
The incident sparked soul searching in the first responder and medical community to determine whether anything could have been done to prevent the tragedy. Could there have been a better way to connect the dots between the murders or warn the police that the suspect had made threats against hospital staff earlier that day?
“What we started to do was look to see if there was information somewhere in any of our siloed data systems that would’ve enabled us to know more information about John Hyde before this incident transpired,” said Deputy Chief J.J. Griego, who oversees support services for APD, including its real-time crime center.
“We did not find anything that would’ve let us know. There was nothing definitive,” Griego continued. “What we did find was that we had limited information, and it takes about three minutes and 40 seconds to get information from our systems to the responding officers in the field. And in that we also recognized that we had a lot of data sources that did not communicate with each other.”
BRIDGING THE DATA GAP
Early incarnations of the real-time crime center, as highlighted in this newsreel from 2013, consisted of a couple of officers on light duty. They were referred to as “bridge operators” because they were the sources of information that bridged the gap between 911 call centers and responders in the field. “They were essentially going through all these different databases and getting that information to the officers as they were responding to these calls for service,” said Griego.
The RTCC continued to evolve as new technologies became available. But the need and desire for police to access data from other sources like court records or national or state databases meant that data silos would continue to be a challenge given the technology they had at the time.
“We really needed to find a solution that would give the bridge operator, investigators and even officers in the field that ‘single pane of glass’ where we could incorporate all those disparate systems,” said Griego. “And that’s when we discovered Peregrine.”
Today, APD boasts a state-of-the-art real-time crime center that uses a real-time decision and operations management platform that integrates data of any type (structured to unstructured) from any data source, providing a holistic view of disparate data sources in one view. The addition of Peregrine enables APD to gain unprecedented situational awareness and provide critical information to officers in the field almost instantaneously so those three minutes and 40 seconds can be used to make preparations versus walking into an unknown situation.
The RTCC now integrates:
- Over 10,000 city-owned cameras, including fixed and mobile, including in schools and buses.
- A network of cameras owned privately by businesses and individuals who participate in the Community Connect Camera Registry.
- 400 quick-deploy automated license plate readers.
- Gunshot detection systems.
- Bait cars and GPS tracking devices.
“If [crime analysts] detect a stolen vehicle through our license plate readers, they can start searching for that stolen vehicle, alert our field units and work toward getting a suspect in custody,” said Deputy Commander Andrew Rodriguez, who oversees the crime analytics side of the RTCC. “When there’s a crime that’s occurred, whether it’s a ShotSpotter activation or somebody calling 911 in the area, we can look at our system of cameras we have throughout the entire city, start looking for suspects based on information we’re getting from the field or from a witness or calling party that’s provided that information and start providing that information out to the field officers.”
Data from the RTCC also aids crime prevention and investigations. “When our crime analysts get to work, they also start taking a deep dive into what the background is related to that crime,” said Rodriguez. “We look to see if there are any other drivers of crime in the area and provide as much information as we can to support not only the field units, but also our investigative units and command staff.”
CRIME PREVENTION
APD has been able to leverage incident data from the RTCC into its crime prevention program.
The foundation of APD’s crime prevention program is “Duke City Stats,” a CompStat program titled after one of Albuquerque’s many nicknames. APD brings together area commanders to review Duke City Stats crime stats. While having all the area commanders in one room to go over stats is nothing new, having a comprehensive view of crime data across the city from the Peregrine platform helps tell a bigger story.
“Criminals don’t really see divisional area or municipal boundaries, so they’re going to cross over and if we just focus on one area command, we may miss a larger trend,” said Rodriguez. “So that’s the benefit of an aggregating database like Peregrine, that one pane of glass we can look through and see if there are crime trends throughout the entire city.”
APD also shares information with the wider community, serving as a resource for the entire state and the region.
COLLABORATING WITH THE COMMUNITY
“A lot of our crime prevention programs are traditional,” said Laura Kuehn, APD’s senior crime prevention specialist. The department uses data from Peregrine to inform those meetings with neighborhood associations and neighborhood watches. They are also developing a portal where residents can view crime data and calls in progress.
“It’s great to be able to go out and talk about what is occurring in the immediate area and also talk to neighborhood associations and neighborhood watches about the opportunities to partner with us by registering their home cameras or, when we’re working with the business community, to form a business alliance,” said Kuehn. “We talk about what they can do with their camera systems to connect with the real-time crime center so that if they have to call 911, the real-time crime center can link into their camera and provide real-time information to the officers responding.”
While technologies like ALPR have been met with skepticism by civil liberties organizations, Griego hasn’t seen pushback from Albuquerque residents. For one thing, APD is very transparent about the technologies they use and their capabilities with such technology.
“Every time I go to a community meeting, every time I talk to someone in the community, it has always been about, ‘How come I don’t have one in my neighborhood? We need more of these,’” said Griego. “I never get any resistance from the community when I speak to them about the technology. Obviously, people want to feel safe and they want to be safe, and we did not see any resistance from the community on the technology we’re deploying.”
SUCCESS STORIES
While it’s hard to attribute to a single cause, the multipronged approach to crime prevention and investigation is working to lower crime. APD’s solve rate on homicides is roughly 90%. “A lot of that has to do with the technology we use and the bridge operators and their work in the real-time crime center as well as our crime analysis division, which is producing a lot of these reports and information for those units,” said Rodriquez. “Peregrine is one of those tools we use to direct our field officers as well as our investigative units toward those drivers of crime so they can have a greater impact. And it’s nice when you’re an officer, you make an arrest. It’s even better when you know that arrest is going to have a larger impact on the crime in that area based on the empirical data and the analysis we’re able to do with Peregrine.”
