John G. Stephenson
What once took hours of analysis now takes seconds – before the first call for service.
It’s 11:00 p.m., the start of the midnight shift in a busy urban police department. An officer turns on his cruiser’s MDT as he starts rolling toward the neighborhoods which comprise his patrol area. The screen in front of him loads a host of visual data which he’ll need over the next eight hours to do his job safely and effectively: a table showing recent crime activity in his sector, categorized and searchable by type of offense, dates and addresses, with each incident also plotted on an accompanying map. At the top of the screen, a fresh situational awareness bulletin pops up with a description of a newly reported missing person. They are features of SoundThinking’s newest generation of its CrimeTracer™ technology.
The officer selects one of the entries on the crime activity table – an assault with a dangerous weapon which occurred earlier in the day. An incident summary loads onto his screen and he notes the description of the suspect. Using the Quick Search capability, he can review all incident reports from the past year in his area which contain a suspect description matching that from today’s assault.
In seconds, a list populates the left half of the screen: a series of names with DOBs, gender, last known address, race, height, weight, hair color, and eye color. Most of them are from his city and several surrounding communities. Noting another detail from that day’s suspect, he makes one more query, asking the software to narrow down the list of names of those reported to have a facial scar. The system immediately searches the large number of past incident reports and returns three names. One of them, a man with a history of violent and weapons offenses, was last known to be living three blocks from the site of the most recent assault. The officer then learns from the BOP that he has been out of prison for at least a year.
The officer goes back to the Trends Dashboard and asks the software to plot assaults in the area over the past year. Six points show up on the map, all within a half mile radius of the suspect’s last known residence. The points are also near a city park where large numbers of people, including kids with gang affiliations and narcotics dealers, hang out at night.
Less than a couple of minutes into his shift, the officer has a focused start. He points his cruiser toward the suspect’s neighborhood and the busy park. He will begin his night with a swing through those streets and past the park to see if anyone matching the description of that morning’s assailant is out there and will repeat the route several times throughout the shift.
During a lull between responding to new calls for service, he will use the same software to scan prior incident reports involving his suspect, including several from police agencies in other communities. He notes more similarities to the assault in his city and is convinced he is on the right track.
Information is the most valuable commodity in police work and this officer has plenty of it to start his night effectively.
Putting Actionable Information in the Cruiser
This hypothetical scenario is based on more than a dozen new capabilities in CrimeTracer Gen3, the crime intelligence solution from SoundThinking, creators of ShotSpotter® and other public safety technologies. Gen3 is the most significant upgrade in the product’s history. The new release expands CrimeTracer from an investigative tool which gave detectives and analysts access to voluminous crime data into a comprehensive, agencywide crime fighting solution now also geared toward the patrol side of the house and command staff. As noted in the scenario, CrimeTracer Gen3 delivers, directly to terminals or devices, automated patrol briefings, BOLOs and other alerts; natural language search; AI-driven summaries; organized case folders containing ongoing investigative insights and leads; and a trends dashboard which transforms raw data into maps and insights which help command staff, patrol supervisors and officers on the street spot patterns, predict problems and deploy smarter.
As public safety data grows at an unprecedented rate, agencies face the challenge of making sense out of vast volumes of disparate, often siloed, data. CrimeTracer connects more than a billion CJIS-compliant records across agencies locally, regionally and nationally, making it the largest law enforcement crime data repository available today. CrimeTracer Gen3 applies smart technology to connect critical information across jurisdictions and data sources, driving accelerated case closure and delivering actionable insights to patrol officers, analysts, investigators, and command staff.
One View for People, Places and Vehicles
CrimeTracer Gen3 offers these new features, along with a fresh, intuitive user interface.
- Patrol Dashboard automatically generates shift briefings with BOLOs, recent incidents and crime patterns tailored to officers’ specific beats, helping to ensure they start each shift with critical situational awareness.
- Trends Dashboard transforms and maps raw data into powerful insights, helping command staff and analysts spot patterns, predict problems and deploy smarter.
- Enhanced Natural Language Search is voice enabled and tuned to police terminology, allowing officers to ask questions in plain language, rather than complex search syntax, to get the answers they need.
- AI Summarization instantly extracts key facts from lengthy reports and records, reducing time spent on manual review.
- Case Folders gather all related incidents in a centralized location, providing one organized view to better reveal connections and accelerate investigations from initial lead to closure.
- Entity Summary Pages provide a comprehensive view of people, addresses and vehicles, including involvements and associations of such persons across jurisdictional boundaries, all at a glance.
SoundThinking’s CrimeTracer is used by more than 2,100 agencies nationwide, with more than 50 categories of data searchable within its one billion plus CJIS records. This vast information sharing network expands further with every new agency that joins; each record added to the system makes CrimeTracer more valuable for all users, expanding the ability to connect people, addresses, vehicles, and other entities within and across jurisdictions.
A New Standard for Patrol Intelligence
Gen3 makes CrimeTracer a force multiplier throughout police agencies, including patrol divisions, which are often the backbone and largest section of a department, and supervisors, shift commanders and command staff responsible for prioritizing deployment of resources. Moreover, CrimeTracer Gen3 seamlessly integrates with other solutions, including ShotSpotter (gunshot detection) and PlateRanger™ (automated license plate recognition). This unified ecosystem of data further adds to its capabilities.
“From patrol to command, everyone now sees the same picture – fast, intuitive search and agencywide trend analysis which keeps us all aligned and ahead of crime,” said Jason Peardon, an investigator with the East Palo Alto Police Department.
For additional information regarding CrimeTracer Gen3, go to https://tinyurl.com/3n8y8exc