12 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: JULY 2017 E agle-eyed NYPD Transit officers ar- rested a man want- ed for a series of Brooklyn burglaries after they recognized him from a photo that was distributed on their department-issued smartphones. Last month, Sergeant Hayes was on patrol with Police Officers Patel and Bereznyak when they no- ticed a man walking along a subway platform. The officers knew the man matched the descrip- tion that was broadcast to their NYPD smartphones the previous day. They de- They may not look like high-tech cops, but the NYPD is mak- ing sure they are. From left, NYPD’s finest: Officer Bereznyak, Sgt. Hayes, and Officer Patel. termined the man’s identity after speaking with him and placed the 27-year-old under arrest for multiple commer- cial burglaries. The NYPD is on the cut- ting edge of using technol- ogy to help officers keep New York City the safest big city in America. The department is con- tinuously integrating leading edge technology into all of their operations. The department is known the world over for revolu- tionizing policing with the institution of CompStat, its weekly crime-fighting and accountability sessions fu- eled by continually evolv- ing electronic mapping and data-display technology. Working with Microsoft in response to the attacks of September 11th, the NYPD also developed the Domain Awareness System (DAS) which pools streams of data from live closed-circuit tele- vision feeds, 9-1-1 calls, license plate readers, envi- ronmental sensors, mapped crime patterns, and other sources. A formidable deterrent to terrorist acts, DAS is one of the world’s premier systems for monitoring and protect- ing a dense urban environ- ment. During the past three years, the NYPD Informa- tion Technology Bureau (ITB) has been rebuilding the department’s technology networks, including a new phone system, a new radio system, and a fiber optic net- work connecting all NYPD facilities. In effect, NYPD is becom- ing its own telco carrier, the third largest such network in the city and the only one not owned by a telephone company. In 2016, our Information Technology Bureau put the finishing touches on a new datacenter in Brooklyn and brought the new Public Safe- ty Answering Center (PSAC 2) online in Bronx, provid- ing a second primary call answering center and full redundancy in the event that either center is disabled. ITB also expanded the NYPD’s cloud utilization, en- suring greater geographical diversity for NYP D data storage. In the inter- est of opening NYP D data to the public, ITB developed CompStat 2.0, a public ver- sion of the C o m p S t a t crime report, with informa- tion about crime and en- forcement activity in every precinct. Also online for the first time are the NYPD’s public accident reports, which used to only be available at pre- cinct facilities. “We are building out a reliable, secure, high-band- width, redundant tech infra- structure, and we are devel- oping an extensive suite of applications to go with that infrastructure,” said Deputy Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who manages the NYPD Information Technology Bureau. Smart Phones and Neighborhood Policing Perhaps most notable of all, our Technology Bureau has decentralized police communications by equipping all 35,000 officers with smartphones and 2,000 patrol vehicles with tablets. These instruments not only provide officers with direct lines of contact by phone or email to the communities they serve, but they also allow them access to a variety of highly useful data tools while in the field and on-the-go. With their de- partmentphones, officers can now access real-time 911 data, includ- ing history of previous emer- gency calls made from the same location and any wanted individuals as- sociated with the address. Often, they are receiving the 911 jobs faster on the phones than the jobs can be dispatched by radio. Officers also have full access to the NYPD Crime Information Center, where NYPD embraces tech to keep 8.5 million safe Rebuilding the agency’s technology, including a new phone system, a new radio system, and a fiber optic network The phones support neighborhood policing by making officers more accessible to the public. Continued on next page