National Real Time Crime Center Association President Nikki North Interview

Real Time Crime Centers are rising in popularity for police departments, yet their mission and functionality are often unknown to the public.

For this report, we interviewed Nikki North, President of the National Real Time Crime Center Association (NRTCCA) and Manager of the Flagler County Sheriff's Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) in Florida.

Executive Summary

The NRTCCA President emphasized the significant crime reduction potential of RTCCs, stating her county's center is associated with a 54% crime reduction. She explained RTCCs can vary from multi-million dollar projects to just "a radio, your call screen, and probably some of the databases." They can integrate data from various technologies and databases to provide a real-time view of policing, but she emphasized the importance of integrating LPR and traffic cameras.

The two biggest challenges, she said, are "funding and staffing," despite the availability of grants. North also acknowledged public pushback on some of these technologies; she noted that her county does not use LPR hotlists.

On how departments select brands, North said a "major factor" is what agencies around them use. "Data sharing is so important. If your agency is using one, and your neighboring agency is using another...it makes it a little more of a challenge." This relates to a lack of interoperability standards and the business drivers for technology companies.

NRTCCA Background

NRTCCA membership includes 200+ law enforcement agencies operating RTCCs. It holds an annual conference and offers training and "Real-Time Crime Center Professional" certifications.

The association lists a few dozen corporate sponsors, including video surveillance companies such as Axis, Convergint, Flock, Fusus, Genetec, Milestone, Motorola, etc.

History and Purpose of Real Time Crime Centers

According to Nikki North, the New York Police Department created the first RTCC around 2005 as a “technology hub to help patrol in real time" using data, and the fundamental idea behind RTCCs is "as simple as that."

It is as simple as listening to the radio, you hear a call, where for example let's say there is a suicide threat, and they can't figure out where the person is, and you find some initial info from those databases, and you relay over the radio and right there you technically have a real time crime center.

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance echoes North's description, saying RTCCs "capitalize on a wide and expanding range of technologies for efficient and effective policing" created as "a response to the police community’s desire to provide immediate information to officers during each call for service."

The development of Real Time Crime Centers (RTCCs) is a response to the police community’s desire to provide immediate information to officers during each call for service. RTCCs are intended to initially triage information from a call for service and provide information, such as suspect vehicle descriptions, victim or suspect criminal histories, and other pertinent information, on the fly to assist in furthering an officer’s investigation during a call. [emphasis added]

North emphasized that, because they focus on calls within their own agency, they differ from Fusion Centers, despite a "stigma" that RTCCs take away from Fusion Centers' missions. Fusion Centers are facilities for the analysis and sharing of "threat-related information" between local, state, and federal authorities. In future reporting, IPVM will expand on differences between RTCCs and Fusion Centers.

Challenges for Real Time Crime Centers

North says that the major challenges agencies have when starting an RTCC are “funding and staffing." In particular, this is because "agencies prefer a hybrid model of sworn and civilian staffing," but sworn officers have higher turnover and cost more:

Finding people to staff it. From what we hear from people a lot of agencies prefer a hybrid model of sworn and civilian staffing. Civilian staffing tends to be cheaper and there is normally less turn over. Sworn are a lot more likely to get promoted and move around in the agency….Sworn also bring a different level of experience something as simple as they are watching a camera, or they see someone run a red light they now have probable cause, and they can transfer that over the radio.

The desire for more technology "like Fusus and Flock" also drives funding challenges:

Funding, a lot of people do want the bigger technology pieces so the video walls and the program integrations like Fusus and Flock, so having the money for those I think would be the bigger challenge, being able to justify spending the money on those.

North says the average cost of starting an RTCC varies widely. Some agencies might spend millions, while others could start with as little as $2,000 in equipment:

Early on, if you remove staffing, I think you could do it with $2,000 without really integrating a lot of technology because at that point all you really need is a person with a radio, a computer, and a desk.

However, the costs balloon as you "add more and more of those technology pieces":

Initially to start one up not much [funding] but of course you add more and more of those technology pieces and annual maintenance fees you would get into the hundreds of thousands to millions depending on how big your agency is.

In 2010, New York City estimated its RTCC cost $11 million to build and maintain a 24/7 staff of 40 detectives and civilian analysts, a 2-story video wall, 15 workstations, and laptops for 175 officers to access RTCC databases in the field.

As with many security technologies, federal grants have supported RTCCs. For instance, in 2020, in the DOJ announced millions in grant funding for RTCCs distributed across Kansas City, Mo., Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Indianapolis.

Technology Used by RTCCs and Their Legal Concerns

When deciding what brand to use, a “major factor” is what the agencies around them are using to ensure interoperability:

The data sharing so important. So, like, if your agency is using one and your neighboring agency is using another and they're not communicating it makes it a little more of a challenge.

As private technology companies become increasingly central to running RTCCs, their ability to profit increases from constraining interoperability but at the expense of RTCCs being restricted in what they can use or select from.

Asked what the most important technology is for RTCCs, North said she hears LPR and traffic cameras emphasized the most.

They always say our traffic cameras and license plate readers [are most important]. Those two together, being able to get a license plate reader hit and then track them on the cameras goes hand in hand.

Police expansion of camera surveillance, particularly LPR and being able to hotlist vehicles, has raised privacy concerns and triggered public pushback. Her own county does not use hot listing:

When it comes to hot listing and stuff like that, we won't do it if there's not any kind of like prior legal predicate.

However, North argues LPRs are justified because "you're driving on a public roadway," and license plates per se are not personal information.

All the cameras, the way we have them set up is they're all in available areas. So that's another way license plate readers are justified as you're driving on a public roadway. So, when scanning your tag, it's not giving any personal identifying information, all it's doing is giving you the tag, it's additional law enforcement database steps that you're taking from there to find out more information on that.

The use of facial recognition by law enforcement has also been criticized, but according to North, “We use that as an investigative resource; we refer to them as advanced analytics." She emphasized that "We can't use [facial recognition] as an end all be all, we use it as a point system ... ultimately, we can’t go solely on that.”

Success of Real Time Crime Centers

For North and her team at the Flagler County Sheriff's RTCC, the RTCC is not the “sole factor” but "around the time we started our center we had a 54% rate in crime reduction.” North shared a story on how an RTCC and the network created by the NRTCCA worked to solve a child abduction:

We had a possible child abduction here, and we started getting information that they were traveling north and on their direction of travel they were going to hit the Georgia state line. We ended up catching them in Florida, in Jacksonville, before they made it out of the state. So, we had Georgia Highway Patrol and all that involved through our contacts.

Various police departments echo this. The 2010 New York City release states:

More than 1,600 requests for information were processed through the RTCC in its first year, contributing to the closure of approximately three-quarters of reported homicides in 2005.

Additionally, numerous press releases from the DOJ highlight success stories from RTCCs.

• Three Individuals Plead Guilty to Violating Federal Gun Control Act and Possessing Cars from Norfolk Southern Railyard
• 21 People Facing Firearms, Illegal Drugs, and Conspiracy Charges Following Multi-Agency Violent Crime Reduction Effort in Memphis
• Six Individuals, Including a Village of Brewster Police Officer, Charged in Sex Trafficking and Bribery Scheme

In future IPVM reporting, we will examine the effectiveness, return on investment, and privacy concerns with RTCCs.