I was watching the below video of a stolen Ferrari taken in a home invasion and driven from Rhode Island down to Florida, who got away from several officers. The whole video is interesting, but its queued to the part on the Flagler County Real Time Crime Center which caught my eye. I have posts on license plate readers and how these sightings get documented in databases, and not just governments as I was watching a repo man with a license plate reader who looked up vehicles in the database to see where they had been spotted a couple decades ago. And the other interesting angle is that they have a database of home security cameras and in some cases can pull up the private home security camera feeds. Big Brother is coalescing around us, and they’re getting your neighbors to fund and even install their own hardware.
Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Real Time Crime Center focuses cameras, computers on stopping crime
By Frank Fernandez
The large screens on the walls of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Real Time Crime Center track law and disorder in the county: license plate readers send alerts on stolen vehicles, cameras watch over crossroads, and maps show where deputies are on patrol.
In an emergency, analysts can switch on cameras at any school in the county. And if necessary, an analyst can light up a screen with a map showing the location of sex offenders and sex predators or pull up images from home security cameras that have agreed to be linked to the system. Analysts can also check crime databases.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly invited the media this week to check out the center inside the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center in Bunnell. Staly said the center is part of the reason crime is down 47% in Flagler County.
“This is the nerve center for how we fight crime and how we reduce crime and how we solve crime,” Staly said. “That’s what this has been able to do.”
Two analysts at computers can tap into the 40-plus video cameras Palm Coast has placed throughout the city. Staly said he plans to add a third analyst.
The analysts can view “hits” from license plate readers placed at 30-some strategic locations throughout the county. These readers send alerts from tags that are registered to stolen vehicles, connected to wanted fugitives or linked to other crimes.
Screens can show where sex offenders and sex predators live so that if a child goes missing, analysts can immediately check to see if any offenders or predators live nearby. If a crime is in progress, analysts can relay information to deputies.
“It’s a great force multiplier when you use this technology and you can apprehend these criminals or find missing people instead of spending hours and hours searching for them,” Staly said. “It’s not just crime although, I mean that’s really what we focus on in the Real Time Crime Center is crime. But it helps in other areas, too.”
The license plate readers and cameras can help deputies locate missing residents, whether it’s an elderly person who has become disoriented or a young child possibly abducted.
The center opened at the courthouse about six months ago. Staly said it will cost $600,000 over three years, including license plate readers and other technology. The Sheriff’s Office also pays about $45,000 to $50,000 per year for a maintenance agreement for the license plate readers. The money came from the Sheriff’s Office budget.
Flagler County’s center is similar to the real time crime center the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office set up last year.
Staly charged Investigative Services Division Chief Paul Bovino with getting the center up and running. Bovino said that the crime center is not Big Brother where people sit around watching what others do all day.
“We don’t sit here and monitor live feeds of cameras,” Bovino said. “I think that’s the million-dollar question everybody always wants us to answer. This is not a monitoring center … we are only using live feeds when it impacts a crime or an investigation that we are currently working.”
The cameras in the schools, for example, are not activated unless there is a problem, Bovino said.
“If there was a critical incident that occurred at any one of the Flagler County schools right now, we could go live and start directing the deputies in the field to respond, whether it be to neutralize a threat to a school immediately or aid in the evacuation of people,” Bovino said. “We could direct that from the Real Time Crime Center.”
Bovino said the center is saving time and making investigations more efficient. Analysts at the center can check a digital map to see what homes in a neighborhood have surveillance cameras. That means if a crime occurs, investigators don’t need to go door-to-door asking residents if they have video and can the investigators view it. Detectives can just check the digital map at the crime center and learn who has a camera that might have video.
The Sheriff’s Office is working to connect more businesses and residences to the system.
Residents and businesses can have their cameras listed as resources at the Real Time Crime Center by filling out an online form to join the Sheriff’s Office Silent Guardians program at flaglersheriff.com/silent-guardians.
The form tells the Sheriff’s Office where the camera is located, what its view is and how to contact the owner.
The company that provides the license plate readers for Flagler also provides them for St. Johns County, so the two counties can easily exchange information over the system. The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office uses a different system, but the two agencies still work together well.
Bovino said of the center: “The main mission is to support the investigators, the detectives and the deputies out in the field. When they are on a crime in progress or going on a call, they can rely on that there are people here digging up information for them, providing camera feeds or any kind of assistance that they can give them.”