St. Louis, MO – October 2019 – The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Departments Real Time Crime Center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“This Real Time Crime center really is the information and the technology hub for the entire St. Louis region,” said Major Angela Coonce of the St. Louis Police Department. “We provide real-time information to officers in the field with the goal of improving officer safety and citizen safety.”

“We are on the cutting edge,” Chief John Hayden says. “There are a lot of cities that visited our real-time crime center to kind of pattern or prototype their approach.”

“We have federations of cameras from all over the city,” Captain Renee Kriesman says. "So we can watch almost any neighborhood in the city.”

Located at police headquarters, the Real Time Crime Center has access to a network of approximately a thousand cameras throughout the city of St. Louis.

“We have a new thing that are called sky cops and our sky cops are a technology that we're able to move around the city,” Kriesman says. “So they have cameras, they have license plate readers, and they have high visibility cameras, which is one of my favorite things because there's a red and blue flashing lights.”

“And so people not only know that they're being watched,” Kriesman says. “The bad guys know that they're being watched.”

The cameras are monitored by both analysts and detectives at all times. And they have an open line of communication with officers. 

“It allows us to put a birds eye view on people, places and things,” Chief Hayden says . “Just to make sure that things are safe.”

The real time crime center opened in May 2015 to monitor, deter and evaluate criminal activity in real time. The mission of the center is improving public safety by getting information to officers quickly to solve and prevent crime.

“Since the time crime center opened, the center has been directly responsible for over 1800 serious arrests in the city, and that's including over 4,300 additional charges,” Major Coonce said. “And those are serious crimes. It's not a misdemeanor or a city violation. Those are serious felonies. So that's a pretty significant number. We know we're helping to improve the overall safety of our city.”