It’s been years in the making, but soon, the Prince George’s County Police Department will begin building its own Real Time Crime Center (RTCC), which will be similar to the one that recently opened in D.C.
Police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, already have a relationship with the District’s RTCC and help coordinate responses when criminal suspects trek back and forth across the D.C.-Maryland border. Now, they’ll have similar access and technology to combat crimes with the ability to respond to situations at the same speed that D.C. does.
“We’re going to merge together our resources, whether that is cameras, our intelligence and information,” said Police Chief Malik Aziz. He uses the analogy of an octopus to describe the new crime center’s capabilities: “A lot of tentacles that reach out and bring information in, such as camera feeds and things like that, that help us solve crimes.”
Fast access to that information has also helped D.C. get out suspect information within minutes of some recent shootings.
For example, the picture of a suspect accused of killing a teenager on the Brookland Metro Station platform was up on D.C. police X feed less than 30 minutes after the shooting. A getaway car police believed was connected to a shooting that left several people was posted online minutes after that crime as well.
“If that information is coming in real time, we’re getting real information that helps us solve the crime a lot quicker than having a patrol officer take a report, pass it to an investigator, do an investigation, (and) get back to leads,” Aziz said.
Aziz said there have been quick arrests made in other incidents even after suspects crossed the border between D.C. and Maryland because of information from D.C.’s crime center.
“Carjackers commonly go back and forth across D.C.,” said Aziz. “And (D.C. police) have used their technology and their real time crime center, to follow a person who left based on information that we gave them from this side. That’s what they’ve been doing for so long, sometimes they get away with it. In this particular case, they didn’t. So we’re going to see more and more outcomes like that, when we’re working together.”
The county’s Real Time Crime Center will operate out of police headquarters in the Westphalia section of Upper Marlboro. It will include at least some of the same technology that D.C.’s RTCC uses, including a platform operated by a private sector company called FUSUS.
Aziz said construction should begin soon, and he’s hopeful the RTCC will open near the end of summer or start of fall.
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