In the beginning, there was one officer with a computer and a radio — and a command staff with a vision. Three and a half years later, the real time crime center at Cobb County Police Department is one of the busiest in the Atlanta area and the state of Georgia and among the most forward-thinking in the country.
“Early on, it was very much like a start-up,” said Captain Darin Hull, who succeeded the initial officer, Major Billy Mitchell, in overseeing the agency’s real time crime center.
Hull said that the Cobb County Police Department takes a “crawl, walk, run approach” to building and growing its real time crime center. The centralized technology hub is well into the “walk” phase — and will soon be ready to run, he added with a smile.
The rise of real time crime centers
Real time crime centers, or RTCCs, have been around for almost two decades but started to boom only in the past few years. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) was the first to open an RTCC in 2005. Years before Cobb County launched its technology hub in September 2021, then Deputy Chief — now Chief — Stuart VanHoozer visited NYPD to gather ideas.
Today, over 300 police departments across the U.S. have some version of an RTCC, according to the National Real Time Crime Center Association.
Definitions of what constitutes a real time crime center vary, said Jacob Cramer, a policing analytics expert and former senior researcher at RTI International, an independent, multidisciplinary think tank. According to Cramer, an RTCC is “the intentional integration of different data systems and technologies in one place — with the focus of providing information in real or close to real-time.”
Every real time crime center has a different setup, structure and focus, Cramer continued, depending on agency size and socio-economic makeup of the jurisdiction, internet connectivity, data bandwidth, and, most importantly, budget.
One of the advantages of the concept is that RTCCs “can be very scalable to whatever fits an agency,” said Cramer, who has studied the efficacy of real time crime centers around the country.
The Cobb County Police Department is a 700-officer agency with five precincts spanning the northwestern part of metro Atlanta. The RTCC has 12 full-time employees, including sworn officers and civilian public safety and criminal intelligence analysts.
The crime center is staffed Monday through Saturday, but the platform is decentralized. Patrol officers and detectives have around-the-clock access to the data on their mobile devices. “Effectively, we are a 24/7 operation,” Hull said.
Real-time surveillance and data integration at Cobb’s RTCC
The Cobb County PD RTCC, located on the fifth floor of the agency’s headquarters in the county seat of Marietta, has a total of 48 computer screens — some mounted on two large video walls, others connected to the workstations — that bathe the windowless room in a blueish hue. Here, data from multiple sources are collected, processed, analyzed and integrated into the information ecosystem, including data from computer-aided dispatch (CAD), gunshot detection sensors, records management systems and GPS mapping.
The main resources are video streams from county-owned traffic cameras, and images from license plate readers (LPRs). During incident calls, RTCC staff have live access to officers’ body cameras and dashcams. In addition, there are CCTV camera feeds from private businesses that have partnered with Cobb PD.
The department has over 800 integrated video feeds in its own jurisdiction and access to a total of almost 12,200 cameras, including those shared by neighboring agencies.
Homeowners can register their security cameras with the Cobb County Police Department through its Security Camera Registry, granting investigators access on a case-by-case basis, like a burglary or a missing person alert. So far, about 3,200 residents have chosen to partner with the police.
For a medium-sized agency like the Cobb County Police Department, the real time crime center is on the larger side, said Hull, mainly due to the makeup of the jurisdiction. Cobb County spans 345 square miles and is the state’s third most populous county, with over 760,000 residents.
With all the differences in size and scope, Cramer said most real time crime centers share the common goal to support officers in the field, primarily patrol — even though detectives benefit as well.
The benefits of RTCCs
The key benefit of RTCCs is an increase in efficiency — or, as many agencies call it, precision policing. “Generally, society expects police officers to stop the right people at the right time and the right places,” Cramer said. “And RTCCs can help improve that function.”
According to the Cobb County Police Department, RTCC data has helped identify and arrest suspects in domestic violence incidents, burglaries, hit-and-run accidents, and even track down street racers. Some incidents have made the news, like the May 2024 fatal shooting of a female student at Kennesaw State University. The suspect fled the scene in a red Toyota Camry. A license plate reader identified the vehicle, and the Cobb County Police Department hot-listed it.
At the time, Officer Johnny Nguyen sat in his patrol car near Interstate 75. Numerous red Toyota Camrys passed by, “but we knew from the LPR pictures that the car we were looking for had very distinct features, such as chrome tint above the windows and black wheels.” Nguyen and his fellow officers were able to spot the targeted vehicle and take the suspect into custody.
Nguyen has been with the Cobb County Police Department for over five years. As he prepared for his evening shift on a recent afternoon, he said that real-time technology makes his job safer. Take a traffic stop, he explained, which can turn from mundane to violent in a split second.
Information from license plate readers provides officers with valuable information before they get out of the patrol car and interact with the driver — for example, if the car is reported stolen or has previously been involved in a shooting or shoplifting. The pictures may also show how many passengers are in the car.
“This allows us to decide whether to call for backup or get an idea of how many officers we’re going to need for this traffic stop,” Nguyen said.
Some research suggests there’s the risk of cognitive overload when technology, designed to help with real-time decision-making, generates so much information that it becomes a distraction.
Nguyen agreed this can be a challenge: “You have to be selective, and you have to know what you are looking for.” But for the most part, he said that he and his fellow officers have embraced real-time technology.
It doesn’t hurt to be tech-savvy. Nguyen has a college degree in cybersecurity, and he’s grateful he can put his skills to good use as a street cop.
Balancing real-time policing technology with community trust
As real time crime centers are becoming more popular, police departments need to address some concerns in the community, said Cramer. Most prevalent are “Big Brother” type fears of over surveillance and violation of privacy rights, especially involving AI-enabled technologies.
“The community has a right to understand what data is being collected and how it is stored and used,” Cramer added. Agencies can get ahead of community concerns by having transparent data use and retention policies in place, he said — and proactively communicating them.
The Cobb County Police Department took this idea a step further and created the role of integration officer at the RTCC — with the mission to help build trust and rapport within the community. Major Stan Bell is a 25-year law enforcement veteran who rejoined the agency after his retirement. His role is to engage and educate residents and local businesses about registering and integrating their cameras with the police department. He also addresses and troubleshoots problems along the way. He often oversees the installation of cameras on-premises and, sometimes, even installs a security system himself.
“I serve as the focal point, the face of the partnership with the police department,” Bell said. “Because people tend to feel more comfortable dealing with a person instead of an entity.”
The Cobb County Police Department regularly invites community groups to visit the real time crime center. “It’s in our interest to be open and show what’s really going on in here,” Hull said, “so that peoples’ imagination is not filling the gap.”
Regional expansion ahead
The metro Atlanta agency recently incorporated the county’s fire and emergency services into its RTCC. “We want to take a more holistic approach to public safety,” said Hull.
Cobb PD also plans to engage in stronger interagency collaboration. Bringing law enforcement from different cities and jurisdictions inside and outside the county into the real time crime center allows agencies to share information, technology and personnel.
“If we all put our individual pieces of the jigsaw puzzle on the table and combine them, we’ll be able to see the whole picture,” Hull said. And once that happens, Cobb’s real time crime center will have reached the “run” phase.
