LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Lawrenceville police officers can now rewind, search and monitor hundreds of cameras across the city from a single room inside headquarters.
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The department announced its Real Time Information Center this week, pulling roughly 900 cameras, license plate readers, body cam feeds and dispatch logs into one dashboard. The roughly $70,000 project was funded through a grant.
Damien Cruz manages the center. He retired from the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office before joining Lawrenceville police last year to build it.
He said the system has already changed how officers handle routine calls.
“It takes all of those things and puts it in one dashboard, which makes it easier to access information and provide that information to the officers much quicker,” Cruz said.
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The license plate readers tied into the center played a role on New Year’s Day when a man was murdered in Lawrenceville and his car was stolen.
“We were able to identify a specific area where he had not traveled past,” Cruz said.
Officers found the car and the suspect on the same day.
Cruz said businesses can already share their own exterior cameras with the department through the platform, expanding the city’s coverage without adding cost.
Before the center, camera footage that nobody was watching live was lost.
“I think it allows the department to bridge that gap between the community’s expectation and then the reality,” Cruz said.
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