Leveraging technology for safer communities: Scottsdale’s real-time crime center at work
This piece was originally published for the Thomson Reuters Institute. Read the original piece here.
Twenty years ago, the New York Police Department launched the first Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) in the United States to analyze data and identify trends in criminal activity. Today, RTCCs are technology-driven divisions within police departments that provide real-time analytics to support law enforcement.
Like many RTCCs around the country, the one in Scottsdale, Arizona, is both a hub for innovation and a critical resource for ensuring the safety for law enforcement officers, residents, and the 11 million annual visitors to the area.
Scottsdale’s RTCC was launched in 2021 within the police department’s Operational Support Bureau as a pilot program with one team member, Chris Henningsen, who is now the RTCC Supervisor. In the four years since its launch, the division has demonstrated its value by providing swift responsiveness and support to officers on the ground. Although relatively small for a department of 400 sworn officers and nearly 300 professional staff, Scottsdale’s RTCC operates with four staff members during daylight hours with extended hours through midnight for a portion of the week, while managing an average call load of 650 calls per day. The RTCC has the flexibility to staff up during large-scale events between September through May when call volumes routinely double the average.
Community-specific design and functionality
Overall, RTCCs are designed to fit the unique needs of each community or police department. In Scottsdale’s case, its RTCC is a fully reactive center, providing virtual response, partnership, or mutual aid only after 911 dispatch or officer request. The approach centers around protecting privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Despite access to thousands of camera feeds, license plate readers, and a camera-equipped drone, footage retention is only maintained within a conservative record-retention period, ranging from two weeks to six months per statute.
Scottsdale’s RTCC connects to a vast network of existing programs and data to maximize the effectiveness of law enforcement in real time. This network includes access to more than 4000 live video streams, pan tilt zoom cameras, city cameras, and partner feeds from schools, faith-based institutions, and private operators. Staff members do not proactively monitor feeds; rather, they access them reactively to support active incidents, serving as a secondary set of eyes in the sky. Automatic License Plate Readers are deployed on major thoroughfares and are used exclusively by the department for vehicular theft.
Scottsdale launched its Drone as First Responder program in 2024 — the first full-time program in Arizona and only the second in the US to receive a FAA waiver to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight for their program. The drone’s less-than-90 second response time provides critical situational awareness for law enforcement officers.
Thank you to the Transforming Local Government Conference and the Scottsdale RTCC for graciously offering a behind-the-scenes look.
The partnership-oriented nature of Scottsdale’s RTCC requires speed and clarity in communication and respectful deference when working with other departments and agencies. As a reactive entity, Scottsdale’s RTCC works together with another division of its police department located a mere 50 feet away — Scottsdale’s Police Communications Dispatch. When Dispatch is notified of a real-time incident, they release a hot tone (which indicates the highest priority of first responders and greatest risk to life safety). The hot tone automatically generates a notification that pops up on at least two of each technician’s monitors and also alerts supervisors.
RTCC technicians can quickly review the 911 call transcript to understand situational details such as location and context and then identify the best way to assist officers en-route to the emergency. This ensures that RTCC technicians can quietly assist behind the scenes while allowing Dispatch to focus on call flow. One home-grown innovation that Scottsdale RTCC has used is the Hitt Box, which enhances technician efficiency. Named for the team member who developed the idea, the modified stream deck device — which have been traditionally used by podcasters and video streamers — features programmable hot keys for instant access to a suite of frequently used tools, sites, or feeds, which can save precious seconds. Scottsdale RTCC takes pride in the fact that it has empowered its technicians to innovate and maximize their expertise, with technicians being treated as the foundation of the RTCC.
Also, developing strong partnerships has been another core foundation of Scottsdale’s RTCC — and it extends these positive relationships through respectful deference in accessing other parties’ technology. For example, a courtesy call is made by RTCC before accessing a partner’s camera feed, and it does not move or redirect cameras of partner entities.
Defining success in real time
While success in real-time policing can be hard to quantify, the Scottsdale RTCC’s impact is clear. (Indeed, the Scottsdale Police Department was highlighted in the 2025 Transforming Local Government Conference.) In one exemplary incident, a 2024 shooting at a Scottsdale grocery store triggered a hot tone. Amid the chaos within the store and conflicting 911 calls, RTCC technicians were able to access camera feeds and immediately began searching for body language and behaviors that did not match other bystanders. RTCC technicians flagged a wounded individual behaving erratically in a bus stop shelter before heading toward an emergency veterinarian clinic. An officer was dispatched, and the suspect (also a victim) was treated with a gunshot wound kit in less than four minutes.
Without this response, the area would have been placed under a regional lockdown, and a reverse-911 alert would have been sent to cell phones within a geo-fenced area notifying them to stay in place. A multi-hour door-to-door search might have ensued to apprehend the suspect or find other victims. This would have not only caused stress and inconvenience for residents and store customers but would have come at great (and unnecessary) taxpayer expense. The RTCC’s eyes in the sky provided additional information to officers on the ground that serves the mission of maximizing situational awareness for first responders.
As of 2023, Scottsdale’s RTCC helped recover more than $1.8 million in stolen property from more than 100 vehicle break-ins, resulting in more than 100 felony-level arrests. However, perhaps the largest indicator of success is intangible — the criminal activity and major events that are being swiftly prevented. In 2023, during Super Bowl LVII and the city’s annual golf tournament, the Waste Management Open — which drew more than 1 million attendees in four days — 911 call volume doubled, yet no major emergencies occurred. That in and of itself, is a powerful testament to the value of real-time policing through RTCCs.
