The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office is working on being proactive when it comes to crime in the county by utilizing the real time crime center.
Set up in the same room as the 911 center, the real time crime center allows law enforcement to virtually respond to a crime within seconds, said Lt. Jamey Moss, who is over the 911 division.
“When something major is going on here, somebody calls and there’s a wreck with injuries, we can be on scene within seconds,” Moss said. “But what we do is, depending on what the situation is, we’re able to very quickly bring up traffic network and access to cameras.”
Moss said the county has between 550 and 600 cameras that can be accessed to help with the virtual response. This means if there’s a 911 call about a wreck at an intersection, the person at the real time crime center can look at the location on the camera and let deputies know what’s happening, if there’s injuries, a car on fire, etc., and how to best utilize resources.
“That’s the whole goal of this room, is to provide real time data to responders to help us solve crimes, keep people safe,” Moss said. “In some aspects, like with wrecks, if it’s a severe one we know what resources we need and a lot of times we get calls about a wreck being very bad and we’re able to turn the camera and see it’s not. So, it also helps us save resources, and a lot of times we get calls about there’s a car broke down on this road, we turn the camera and it’s not there anymore, maybe they got it moved or started and are on their way. A lot of times it helps us to be able to save resources too.”
The real time crime center has been active for around four months, Moss said. The county also utilizes a software called command aware. This software shows a map of the entire county and shows deputies on active calls, along with the deputies’ locations throughout the county. It also shows recent 911 calls and plots them on a map, along with street names and addresses. The system is also a good way to keep deputies safe.
“If one of them starts yelling on a radio and we don’t have a camera nearby… we could zoom in right now and see (the address),” Moss said. “We can track their radio too, so if (a deputy) had to chase somebody through those woods it helps us see where he’s going. That helps us find him.”
There is also a software that allows law enforcement to take items out of videos that they don’t want to see, Moss said. For example, if they are looking for a red truck from a robbery, and know the time frame of the crime, they can set the software to show all red vehicles that passed by the nearby cameras during that time frame. It also allows law enforcement to condense hours of video into a few minutes.
“It’s really an effective tool for us so we don’t have to spend hours and hours, whereas beforehand, because not every crime do we know an exact time frame, sometimes it’s 10 or 12 hours later,” Moss said. “So, before one of my folks or one of the investigators was having to watch through all of that vehicle and now we can do it much faster. So really an effective tool and that’s on all the cameras.”
Moss said the goal is to keep Columbia County safe, and these resources are making a big difference in catching criminals. He added that a lot of criminals are coming to the area from other cities and the technology allows law enforcement to catch them quicker.
“We’re trying to be very forward thinking, too, because this county is growing and people come here because our schools, they feel safe, our department working together with the community,” Moss said. “The whole goal of this is to be able to continue to have a good livelihood in Columbia County for the citizens to keep everybody safe.”
