Once every few weeks, Lt. Michael Ricupero rushes from the second floor of One Police Plaza, NYPD’s iconic headquarters in Lower Manhattan, to join fellow cops at a nearby scene of a crime. He leaves a large room packed with wall-mounted monitors and multi-screen workstations, high-fives several patrol officers on his way down, jumps in a squad car and races to the scene he had just analyzed, armed with his service weapon — and tons of data.
“It’s amazing to see when it all comes together,” says the 19-year veteran of the New York City Police Department. Ricupero is in charge of investigations, facial recognition and special projects at the agency’s real time crime center.
Real time crime centers, or RTCCs, have been around for almost two decades but started to boom in the past few years. Today, over 300 police departments across the U.S. have a centralized technology hub, according to the National Real-Time Crime Center Association.
At RTCCs, police gather and analyze data in real or close to real time. The goal is to support officers and detectives in the field. Real time crime centers gather surveillance, intelligence and other data from multiple sources — including video, computer-aided dispatch (CAD), automated license plate readers (LPR), gunshot detection sensors, records management systems and GPS mapping — and integrate the data into one information ecosystem.
NYPD’s real time crime center was the first to open in 2005 and is among the nation’s largest, with several thousand integrated public and private cameras. It serves 77 precincts and supports 36,000 officers.
Innovative idea born out of the 9/11 attacks
The idea of real time crime centers was in part inspired by London’s security cordon called Ring of Steel. In the 1990s, after a series of bombings by the Irish Republican Army, Britain’s capital put up video cameras in the historic City of London to help prevent terrorist attacks.
In the U.S., fusion centers have been around for decades. They were designed for law enforcement agencies to share intelligence at a federal level. After 9/11, New York City officials looked into localizing the concept of fusion centers, with the idea to create a live picture of crime in the city. Funded by a $11 million grant from the New York City Police Foundation, NYPD built a Grand Data Warehouse and giant intelligence search engine with access to 35 different data sources. It also integrated a sprawling network of CCTV cameras and license plate readers.
“It was a one-of-a-kind creation and a very innovative idea back then,” says Ricupero. What started in New York spread across the country and eventually the world.
Today, NYPD’s real time crime center has a staff of full-time investigators who operate 24/7 across three shifts. All are sworn officers, unlike some agencies where civilian data analysts work alongside police.
In the beginning, most investigators in the RTCC had a background as detectives, mainly warrant detectives, Ricupero says, “because they tap into every data source they can find, and they think outside of the box.” They also had to be tech-savvy, which was not a given in 2005.
Today, he picks investigators for the RTCC from all backgrounds, adds Ricupero, who spent most of his career working patrol before joining the real time crime center in 2016.
Building an RTCC comes with multiple challenges, he says. “There’s procurement and funding. There’s logistics. And there’s a lot of detail that goes into creating policies.” Policies are critical as the RTCC is handling massive amounts of often sensitive data.
Watchdog organizations and community representatives have raised concerns about privacy violations and the specter of “Big Brother.” That’s why law enforcement must be clear and transparent about what they do “with the data operationally, especially with information collected through surveillance,” says John Hollywood, senior researcher at the RAND Corporation and expert on the use of technology in policing.
At NYPD, most data gathered in the RTCC is used to support patrol officers during 911 calls or help detectives solve cases, says Ricupero. He frequently engages in community events to keep the public informed about the work at the RTCC. Also, the city is required to publish major new technologies on its website and allow the public to comment.
“Some people think we have secret gadgets here,” Ricupero says, smiling. “We don’t. We want and need to gain the community’s trust, so we’ve got to be transparent.”
Information leveraged through data analytics
There have been several milestones in implementing new technologies over the past two decades at NYPD’s real time crime center. In 2011, the RTCC launched its facial identification unit. In 2013, the RTCC started its GPS tracking program due to an increase in robberies in pharmacies and has evolved into a program with devices installed at banks, ATMs and retail stores, and hidden in currency packs, cellphone boxes and pill bottles.
“Over the last two years, our real time crime center was able to assist patrol in over 100 arrests thanks to the tracking going off,” according to Ricupero.
In 2017, NYPD launched its vehicle identification group inside the RTCC — “facial recognition for automobiles,” as Ricupero calls it. Up to 10 investigators work in the unit at any given time. They are “passionate car people,” says the police lieutenant. One is a former engineer; another is a mechanic.
Based on video feeds and LPR technology, they try to determine the make and model of the vehicle, if possible, get a partial license plate number, and then recreate the car’s vehicle identification number.
All the available technology — from cameras to LPRs to gun detection technology — is helpful in and by itself, says Ricupero. But “it’s a game changer when it’s leveraged through data analytics,” he adds — scanned, processed and distilled so that patrol officers and detectives in the field can access the information on their phones or tablets as they respond to an incident or work a crime scene.
With more real time crime centers springing up around the country, and thanks to the National Real Time Crime Center Association, established in 2022, investigators from different agencies find it easier to network on a case-by-case basis and share information gathered at their RTCCs.
Data and research show that RTCCs help, in fact, solve and prevent crimes.
Over the past two decades, felonies and misdemeanors in the Big Apple have been on a decline, according to NYPD crime statistics — including murder, robbery, assault, property theft and criminal trespass. The reasons are multi-faceted, but the real time crime center certainly plays a role in the downward trend, says Ricupero.
A 2019 study, conducted by the RAND Corporation and funded by the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance, looked at several district-level real time crime centers in Chicago. The study found that having technology support hubs and analysts in place, combined with regular meetings led by command staff, resulted in higher levels of awareness, more rapid decision-making and responsive actions, says Hollywood, the lead author of the study. This led to “a significant drop in crime, especially robberies and burglaries,” he adds.
Ricupero says he sees the benefits of the RTCC every day, but one example where all the elements of integrated, real-time technology came together was the Junior Guzman case.
In 2018, 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz was killed in the Bronx in a case of mistaken identity by a Dominican-American gang. He was stabbed with large knives and machetes, and the murder was captured on CCTV and cellphone video.
Ricupero and his team worked the case. They ran facial recognition of all the videos. Scanned thousands of social media posts, “and it snowballed from there, a combination of smart technology and good basic police work.” One by one, 14 gang members were arrested, and five were later convicted of murder.
Importantly, positive “hits” on pictures of people run through facial recognition software do not give investigators probable cause to arrest any suspect, they simply point talented investigators in the right direction — as in the Guzman-Feliz killing.
“It was a terrible, nasty crime, but it was gratifying to see that with the help of the RTCC, we were able to bring the family some closure,” says Ricupero.
Crime reduction, officer safety and security collaboration
Real-time technology integration can also improve officer safety, says RAND researcher Hollywood. Immediately available information about the area, the site and the suspects can increase officers’ situational awareness as they respond to a call.
Also, a camera connected to the RTCC at the call location allows investigators to “basically surveil the scene where the officers are operating and respond in real-time,” says Hollywood, for example, by sending backup.
Hollywood sees the short-term trend going in the direction of more cameras and more integration — city-mounted cameras, traffic cameras, security cameras by private businesses or homeowners, like Ring doorbell cameras — and more sophisticated analytics software to process the data.
However, he encourages agencies considering implementing the technology to not just look at it as a real-time response tool. They should also use video feeds and map displays to identify and understand crime patterns in their jurisdictions.
Further, RTCCs “provide the space and data and resources to bring together people from different units of an agency, from other agencies or from the community” — like social services or private and corporate security — to work on solving and reducing crimes, says Hollywood.
RTCCs can also support joint security efforts during high-profile events, like political conventions, protests and riots, or major sports tournaments.
AI as a game changer for RTCCs
For NYPD’s real time crime center, the future is set for growth. Last November, the department revealed a new real time crime center van which replaced the older model. It’s equipped with the same technology as the RTCC and built to support officers and detectives in the field. The van has a 50-inch tablet with interactive mapping and video conferencing capabilities and an external screen that can display information for the public. In May, the city announced the launch of a real-time information platform that allows businesses to link their private CCTV cameras with the real-time crime center to share and integrate video feeds. The goal is to jointly combat retail theft and further improve efficiencies in policing.
NYPD recently launched a “drone as first responder” (DFR) program, which is gaining popularity among agencies across the nation. The idea is to have drones evaluate the scene and circumstances of a 911 call before officers arrive, making their response safer and more effective. NYPD’s new drone program is not yet tied into the RTCC, says Ricupero, but investigators can get access to the drone feeds if needed. “I would like to credit New York City Mayor Eric Adams, NYPD Police Commissioner Edward Caban and NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry for getting this technology into the hands of NYPD officers,” notes Ricupero.
Ricupero expects AI to play a big role in the future of policing, especially in the real time crime center, “as long as we use it in a responsible and transparent way, and as long as there’s always a human behind the AI,” he says.
One example would be using AI to link live facial recognition software to weapons detection technology — an approach that has the potential to make arrests faster and safer, he says.
His main advice for agencies considering building a real-time crime center is to start small, set realistic goals, and expand in clearly defined increments. They should always “stay innovative and curious,” says Ricupero — and occasionally get out into the field to see how the ever-smarter technology applies in the real world of policing.
