St. Louis police department deploys real-time crime center supported by Motorola Solutions technology

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officials and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay yesterday unveiled the city’s new real-time crime center and transportation hub, which is designed to leverage existing surveillance assets and technology from Motorola Solutions to coordinate resources to prevent or limit criminal activity.

“It’s a great day for law enforcement; it’s a bad day for criminals,” Police Chief Sam Dotson said during the press event, a video of which was made available to IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “So, we’re excited about this.”

Slay echoed this sentiment.

“What we’re doing here today is giving the men and women of this department information and tools that will help them even be more effective in reducing and addressing crime in the city of St. Louis,” Slay said during the press event. “They deserve it. They deserve the very best equipment and the very best information, so they can do their jobs better—they can respond to crime not only quicker, but in a more effective and efficient way.”

Dotson said the current version of the real-time crime center represents the completion of the first of four construction phases for the facility. Right now, the center has 8 video screens; when complete, the facility will boast 32 video screens.

Within the center, trained analysts will be able to access video from both public and private cameras during emergencies, Dotson said.

“We’ll have access not only to the cameras that are owned and maintained by the city, but also to cameras that are owned partnerships like the downtown partnership,” he said. “It’s a great way to really leverage the technologies that are out there to keep our community safe.”

But analysts at the real-time crime center will have quick access to more than just video, thanks to the real-time-intelligence client from Motorola Solutions, according to Nathan Rowe, director of product management for Motorola Solutions’ intelligence-led public-safety portfolio.

“This tool gives us the ability to aggregate multiple disparate data sources and multimedia, including video, CAD information, records details, and things like ShotSpotter [gunshot detection]—all technologies that are currently deployed in St. Louis,” Rowe said during the press event.

“We provide them all in a common operating picture to help achieve greater situational awareness, so the analysts that sit in this room are able to get meaningful intelligence out, distribute it to the field, and help reduce crime, increase officer safety and overall improve the agency and the community.”

Angela Coonce, a captain in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, noted that the real-time crime center will let law enforcement integrate information from video and license-plate recognition, which means “the odds of us solving that crime are a lot greater.”

In addition, the integration of myriad technologies can help improve information sharing, be it with another real-time crime center like the one in Kansas City or simply within the St. Louis department, Coonce said.

“We wanted to focus on information gathering [and] information sharing,” she said. “Because there are so many disparate systems within our department, information doesn’t always flow as easily as it should. We want to break down those silos and share it with everybody who needs it to solve crime.”