Yorktown Partners With Westchester's Real Time Crime Center​

YORKTOWN, NY — Westchester County police have a new initiative: the Westchester County Police Real Time Crime Center. And Yorktown police are partners in a pilot information-sharing project.

Staffed by detectives, the RTCC leverages numerous modern technologies and public-private partnerships to take crime-fighting to the next level. That means that information that once took hours to assemble after a crime is now available within minutes and can be forwarded immediately to officers in the field; for example, satellite images and security footage, and background info on suspects and vehicles.

Initial local partners involved in the pilot information-sharing project with the RTCC are the Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Mount Pleasant, Yorktown and Peekskill police departments.

“Technology is always evolving and so does our use of it to respond to crime patterns and criminal incidents in real time,” Commissioner George N. Longworth said. “The Real Time Crime Center will help make Westchester safer for all who live and work here.”

The RTCC sprang into action earlier this month when a Verizon store was robbed at gunpoint. Without any report of the crime, or any description of the suspects or the vehicle they used, Westchester County Police patrol officers already had the robbery crew in their sights — they had the technology.

Longworth noted that the suspects captured in the Greenburgh robbery have since been linked to three Verizon store robberies in Westchester and one in Orange County.

“This robbery crew was put out of businesses thanks to the Real Time Crime Center and the effective response by patrol officers reacting to the instant information the RTCC provided,” he said.

The RTCC operates out of county police headquarters in Hawthorne. It puts a massive data warehouse at a detective’s fingertips, including shared law enforcement databases of police, corrections and probation records and cases; public records and other open-source data; live traffic cameras; license plate readers; tracking technologies and other tools, including facial recognition software.

Grant funding has been used to purchase some of the technology, equipment and software being utilized in the RTCC.

In addition to the Greenburgh robbery, the RTCC has used critical information collected in real time to help:

• solve a burglary and a robbery in Mount Kisco;
• solve a burglary in Bedford;
• arrest four persons driving stolen vehicles on Westchester parkways and recover those vehicles;
• identify a ring of thieves stealing high-end handbags from T.J. Maxx and Marshalls stores in Westchester, New York City and Pennsylvania. One suspect has been arrested by WCPD and other arrests are pending here and in those other jurisdictions.

In addition, information provided through the RTCC has generated valuable leads in active investigations by the county police, nine municipal police departments in Westchester and several federal agencies, officials said.

For example:

• Details about addresses where suspects might flee to following a crime;
• Satellite images and/or maps of locations where the crime occurred and of locations where investigators might go next;
• Booking photos and other images of suspects or potential suspects;
• Images of persons or vehicles captured by security cameras;
• Information about suspects, associates and vehicles culled from records involving criminal complaints, criminal cases, parking tickets, parole and probation records, and state and national criminal databases.

PHOTO: Detective Dana Faye and Chief Inspector John Hodges, commanding officer of the Detective Division, monitor a developing investigation in the Real Time Crime Center./ Westchester County Police