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Chattanooga PD Seeks Real-Time Crime Data via Camera System

This system could allow a handful of police officers in a room to track critical details as incidents unfold.

(TNS) -- Lt. John Chambers waves an arm at the white-walled room in the police department's headquarters on Amnicola Highway and describes what could be.

He hopes to turn the room — now filled with dusty old equipment, a few tables and not much else — into the police department's new brain, a central control of sorts, where monitors will display live images and video streams from hundreds of cameras across the city.

Chambers pictures a system that would allow a handful of police officers in the room to track critical details as incidents unfold — if a 911 caller tells the operator that a red SUV was involved in a drive-by shooting, the officers in the center would be able to set the system to alert any time a red SUV passes a camera near the site of the crime.

The officers at those monitors could hop on the radio to tell officers in the field where that red SUV is as it passes various cameras, or even send the information straight to those officers' patrol cars, Chambers imagines. The officers could relay statistics about other recent shootings in the area to officers in the field as they pull up to the scene.

That vision is still a long way from becoming reality, but the police department has asked the city for just under $1 million to create such a room, dubbed the "Real Time Intelligence Center," in next year's budget. City Council members are currently in the process of reviewing the budget and will vote on it in a couple of weeks.

If funded, the police department will need to streamline, update and consolidate several backroom processes — how records are kept, managed and tracked — before such a room would be truly useful, Chambers said.

The police department's data collection process is currently nowhere near real time, he said.

"Right now, we're at least 15 days behind," he said. "It will take 15 days from the day to accurately tell you how many assaults occurred that day."

But once the systems are updated, the police department should be able to have close to real-time information, he added. Then, Chambers hopes to combine the police department's crime analysis and crime intelligence units and house both groups — about 10 people — in the Real Time Intelligence Center.

"You combine [the analysts'] expertise with the tacit knowledge of our intelligence investigators, and give them real-time data — or as close to real-time data as we can get — and they can actually help us deploy resources on a proactive basis rather than a reactive basis," Chambers said.

If funded, the project is expected to take 18 months to fully implement, according to police.

A major part of the system will be the video and still feeds from cameras across the city, which officers will likely monitor 20 hours a day, in two 10-hour shifts, Chambers said.

In 2007, the city installed more than 100 cameras across the city, and those feeds could be sent to the Real Time Intelligence Center, as well as feeds from cameras installed by the Chattanooga Housing Authority. The police department may also be able to use feeds from cameras owned and maintained by private citizens, Mayor Andy Berke said.

"We have a church on every corner in our city," he said. "If they're in a neighborhood that has seen violence, they'll be able to put up a camera in their parking lot or on their door, at a relatively low cost, and feed it into our center."

He's recently pushed the use of cameras as an anti-crime measure and announced the Real Time Intelligence Center in his state of the city address in April.

Residents in neighborhoods where cameras are likely to go up have mixed feelings about the technology, with some raising concerns about privacy and questioning whether the cameras will be effective.

"Why use the money for cameras? What you need is to put people to work," said Vannice Hughley, president of the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association. "I think it's a waste of money. It's just another Band-Aid on an out-of-control situation."

Others see the cameras as a way to bypass witnesses and victims of crimes who are too afraid of retaliation to work with police. Lisa Davis, president of the East Lake Neighborhood Association, pointed to the recent killing of Bianca Horton, a 26-year-old mother who was a witness in a quadruple shooting last year, as proof that witnesses' fears are justified.

"Witnesses are afraid now," Davis said. "We just had a young lady murdered — we don't have to worry about people coming forward if you have things on film."

James Moreland, president of the Avondale Neighborhood Association, said he's heard some concerns about privacy, but the majority of people he's talked to prioritize safety.

"You can have all the privacy you want, but if you're shot in the head, what good is it?" he asked.

Police emphasized the cameras will be set up in public areas, where citizens have no expectation of privacy. If funded, some cameras will be semi-permanent, while others will be mobile and moved to particular events.

"The intent is when we have these drive-by shootings and these kids are getting killed, I want to be able to go back and look and see where that son of a gun is, what he's driving and go put his butt in jail for the rest of his life," Chambers said. "It has nothing to do with wanting to spy on your backyard pool. That's ridiculous."

©2016 the Chattanooga Times/Free Press (Chattanooga, Tenn.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.