You might not have known it was there, but the Monroe County Crime Analysis Center has been operating out of the Rochester Public Safety Building since 2007.
The idea behind crime analysis is that you hire several people and put them in a room with access to all sorts of resources to help investigators. They have DMV records, gang information, Facebook profiles, all at their fingertips. They are able to analyze crime patterns and identify high-risk situations.
Mike Green is the Executive Deputy Commissioner with New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. He says they got the idea to improve on the crime analysis center from a real-time crime center in New York City.
The upgrade to real time involved the installation of some technological advancements, most noticeably a wall of monitors, meant to help the analysts work more efficiently and quickly in the gathering and disseminating of information. They also used grant money to hire more employees, so the center would be staffed seven days a week and over longer periods of time.
Green says Rochester was chosen for these upgrades deliberately.
"They have the best facility of any of our crime analysis centers so the facility was best able to handle it. And, if we're going to roll things out like that we try to roll them out where they're needed and Rochester and Buffalo count for a huge percentage of our shooting and homicides."
Rochester was also selected because of its shot spotter technology in the city.
"So if a shot goes off you have your analysts sitting there watching and you hear the shots, they see the location of the shot, they have access to the city cameras so they can pull the city cameras up on the wall."
All of this is meant to happen immediately and give investigators a lot of help toward catching criminals and solving crimes. This kind of instantaneous crime analysis makes the center the first of its kind in the state.
