How Real-Time Crime Centers Draw on Video Surveillance

Real-Time Crime Centers Aid the Search for Suspects

When a shooting occurs at a gas station, for example, officers may lack descriptions of a suspect beyond what’s provided by a 911 operator, Smith says. When officers arrive, they may attempt to access video from the gas station but must wait for an owner or manager to show up and grant access. It can take several hours to produce a good description or image of a suspect without video access ahead of time and when only a business’s IT team is familiar with the equipment.

But businesses can choose to integrate their video feeds with the county’s RTCC.

“If we have access to their cameras, we’re able to load, go in, pull up the recorded image, locate the suspect of the shooting, take an image of it and then share that with the officers as quickly as we can,” Smith says.

READ MORE: Real-time crime centers help secure communities.

Flock provided the DeKalb Police Department with over 230 dedicated live cameras. The police department also possesses approximately 270 license plate readers, a portion of the 1,200-plus LPRs in DeKalb County overall. Meanwhile, the county’s 32-by-4-foot Activu digital wall provides centralized intelligence for the police department so they can see what individual analysts are seeing.

“Instead of having each analyst trying to pull up the same thing, it’s easier for just one person to pull it up, us put it on the wall, and then everyone sees the same thing so that we’re all operating on the same information,” Smith says.

The wall shows video from Flock, the Axon Fusus real-time operations and intelligence platform, Georgia Department of Transportation cameras and drones. The DeKalb RTCC shares intelligence with smaller jurisdictions in the county that already use Flock cameras, Smith says.

Meanwhile DeKalb has a transparency portal through Flock, which consists of a website with basic information for the public, including analytics.

Real-Time Crime Centers Improve Situational Awareness

A drive-by shooting in Hartford, Conn., resulted in the death of a child. The police department was able to use a camera and LPR technology to find the suspect’s car immediately, says Sgt. Chris Mastroianni, supervisor of the Capital City Command Center (C4) in the Hartford Police Department.

To assist in solving gun violence, hate-crime graffiti, arson and illegal dumping of trash, the department began expanding its camera network as part of C4 in November 2025. With C4, Hartford has improved its case solvability rate, and it is adding cameras at 50 additional intersections to allow investigators to synthesize video data to create actionable, real-time intelligence. 

“Our goal in this real-time crime center is to create solvability,” Mastroianni says. “By creating solvability, we’re making more apprehensions. The more apprehensions we make of violent offenders, we tend to see reductions in those crimes.”

Since 2015, the Hartford Police Department has deployed close to 1,300 cameras. It also uses Ericsson Cradlepoint cellular solutions, which support equipment such as mobile pod cameras. In addition, the department’s Axis Communications cameras are compatible with the Milestone video management system, which easily integrates different products.

LEARN MORE: Real-time crime centers enhance situational awareness.

“It’s a seamless integration of technology,” Mastroianni says. “Not only do we pull the Axis cameras into Milestone, but we can also use the onboard edge analytics that Axis features.”

Hartford integrated Axis pan-tilt-zoom cameras with fixed and panoramic sensors, network horn speakers, strobes and LPRs. Mastroianni values how the Axis cameras work with different technologies.

With AI analytics, law enforcement professionals can filter information in a search, such as the make and model of a car passing through an intersection, and analyze heat paths of people walking or entering a building during the investigation of a crime, Mastroianni says.

“Instead of casting a net out, we’re kind of almost spearfishing and really quickly getting to the data we need,” he says.

Video surveillance tools allow Hartford to find missing people and identify auto theft.

With Axis video surveillance tools, Hartford boosted its homicide case solvability rate to more than 80% over the past few years and reached 100% in 2025. In a study conducted with the University of Pennsylvania, of 243 shooting assault cases over a two-year span in Hartford, cases with video had a 442% increase in solvability, Mastroianni says.

Real-Time Crime Centers Integrate Video Camera Data

In 2022, the real-time crime center at the Spokane (Wash.) Sheriff’s Office had a small video surveillance footprint compared with other RTCCs or law enforcement agencies that might have hundreds if not thousands of cameras, says Lt. Justin Elliott, commander of the Regional Intelligence Group 9 (RIG9) at the sheriff’s office and national training director for the National Real Time Crime Center Association.

The Spokane Sheriff’s Office differs from those in police departments of other cities because of its larger geographic jurisdiction, Elliott says.

“We had some cameras but not very many,” Elliott says. To complement the few cameras it did have, the sheriff’s office wanted access to all surveillance cameras in their area, he says.

“We didn’t have access to all of these systems, and nothing really worked together,” Elliott says. The sheriff’s office can now access not only its own cameras but also those in the courthouse and nearby small cities.

Spokane uses Milestone Systems’ video management system along with data intelligence tools, LPRs and BriefCam video analytics. Investigators can access video recordings on mobile devices as well as desktops.

“We have a growing number of cameras, and we haven’t had the time to go and view every camera to see where valuable information was,” Elliott says. “So, these systems work together. They give us that picture, and they can narrow down to what we’re looking for in a manageable amount of time.”

“We used to watch the footage in real time,” adds Brad Cushman, Spokane County’s RTCC technology manager, who oversees the center’s video feeds. “Now we can compress it into minutes, compared with hours.”