The challenge
The department had eleven systems, from dispatch and records to evidence, jail management and a camera network built up over fifteen years, and none of them talked to each other. Detectives spent much of each week requesting records from other units, and the department’s violent crime clearance rate had fallen for four years in a row. The city council funded a real-time crime center in its 2023 budget on the condition that it open within the fiscal year.
What the department did
The department chose Concord as the center’s platform and connected its dispatch, records, evidence and jail systems in the first six weeks. It brought its 212 city cameras into Concord Live and installed 96 Kerbside cameras on the main roads into the city, 41 of them funded by neighborhood associations and businesses that chose to share with the department. Kinship resolved 3.1 million records in the department’s systems to 486,000 people, addresses and vehicles. The center opened 94 days after contract signature, staffed by eight analysts across three shifts.
How it works now
When a call comes in, an analyst in the center sees the address, the people and vehicles associated with it, any Kerbside reads nearby and the closest cameras, and pushes a briefing to the responding officers’ phones before they arrive. Detectives open a case and see every related report across the department’s systems on one screen. Kerbside alerts on stolen and wanted vehicles go to dispatch within seconds.
Results
In its first full year the center supported 9,842 calls for service and 1,412 investigations. The department’s violent crime clearance rate rose from 41 percent to 57 percent, and Kerbside reads contributed to the recovery of 612 stolen vehicles. The median time from a report to a first investigative lead fell to three hours and twenty minutes.
We had eleven systems that didn’t talk to each other and a detective unit that spent half its week asking for records. Now the records find the detective.