SEATTLE — The Seattle Police Department formally introduced its latest high-tech crime fighting tool on Wednesday, but it was actually pressed into service months ago.
When shooting after shooting plagued Seattle this past summer, Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole ordered the long-planned Real Time Crime Center to get up and operational immediately.
"We started using it back in July as we were noticing an uptick in shots fired in the city," SPD Chief Operations Officer Mike Wagers said after the crime center's official unveiling. "Since then, we've seen a nose dive in shots fired, so we knew this was a good way of doing business."
For the first time, the new command center on the seventh floor at police headquarters funnels data from 911 calls, radio traffic and other sources to one location. It then presents that information visually and in real time on computer screens and a huge wall-sized dashboard so commanders can dispatch resources immediately.
The incidents are color-coded: red represents highest priority, green for priority two, and yellow for priority three.
SPD analyst Brendan Bouier, who helped design the system, confirmed the simplicity of the color codes will help speed officer response times.
"At the end of the day, the point of any sort of analysis is to turn raw data into useful information," he said. "The point of the dashboard is to allow a person at a glance and quickly be able to interpret and act on that information."
The Real Time Crime Center opened about a year after the department introduced SeaStat , a system that uses technology to gather and analyze crime data.
Mayor Ed Murray said since SeaStat's debut, overall crime citywide is down 13 percent.
The hope is that the Real Time Crime Center will keep crime trending downward.
"This will be the hub of our agile policing strategy," O'Toole said.
KIRO
