They can read your license plate,
They know when you have fired your gun,
This Christmas, the city of Albuquerque's legislative wish list includes millions to boost abilities to surveil the streets and share that data with its law enforcement neighbors.
Specifically, there are two big ticket items: $20 million to expand the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) to cover the entire metro area, which includes portions of several counties, and $20 million to add more cameras and gunshot detection devices within the city itself.
Keller said the RTCC collects data from 10,000 cameras, with license plate readers on 10 roads and ShotSpotter gunshot detection in 15% of the city.
"Here's the point: This should be everywhere, right?" Keller said with Democratic state Reps. Charlotte Little and Cynthia Borrego, both of Albuquerque, and others listening intently.
He added, "Crime has no boundaries."
Keller said they would use the $40 million to add cameras and plate readers to Nob Hill and West Central but also, and with less specifics, add ShotSpotter devices and expand RTCC capabilities across the metro area.
He said that means integrating the data and making it shareable across jurisdictions, adding that the software is the expensive part.
"If their community wants it, it should be Rio Rancho. It should be in Los Lunas. It should be in our neighboring tribes, if they want it, of course," Keller said.
During the news conference, officials showed off the RTCC, and it was akin to what you see in movies: dozens of screens both big and small spread across a large wall.
Many of the small screens showed live camera views of places around the city, a large screen showed a map of gunshots detected by ShotSpotter and another screen showed a live view of the police helicopter as it gave the Speaker of the House Javier Martínez, D- Albuquerque, a ride-along.
Several RTCC employees sat at desks with multiple monitors showing other maps, calls for service and databases.
APD Deputy Chief J.J. Griego said they have six to eight people working at the RTCC, getting pertinent information to officers as they respond to calls in real time.
"When an officer is dispatched to a call, we're trying to get all the information we have about that call to the officer," Griego said. "It's about officer safety. It's about community safety."
Officials said the technology helps build better cases and catch people faster, attributing arrests in high-profile cases to the technology, including politically motivated drive-by shootings, a disgruntled man targeting other Muslim men and an 11-year-old boy killed in a shooting while leaving a baseball game.
Medina said the technology and information-sharing also can prevent situations that led to the department's federally-mandated reforms, such as officers going into situations "blind" with no information — like past calls and mental health history — on the people they would encounter.
The funding requests were among dozens of items on the Metro Crime Initiative, which lists goals the city is seeking legislative help in achieving. With the proposed RTCC expansion, Keller said it made sense for law enforcement to work together within the same system.
"Who doesn't want a Real Time Crime Center? I mean, every entity would want one, right? The challenge is, it's really expensive," he said. "And so it's much more reasonable in the metro to just piggyback on what we've done."
Afterward, two of the dozen or so law enforcement leaders in attendance walked out to their vehicles. They talked excitedly about the prospect of having access to such a system and how they could utilize it in their own efforts.
©2023 the Albuquerque Journal, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
