New Real Time Operation Center launches to help the Phoenix Police Department

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Police Department announced the launch of its latest Real Time Operation Center intended to help reduce crime in the area.

The site, which opened in January, is located at 39th Avenue and Cactus Road in the Cactus Park Precinct.

“After two years of hard work and coordination from the police department, my office and the community, I’m proud to say the Real Time Operation Center has officially opened and already providing positive results,” Councilwoman Betty Guardado said in a Thursday press release.

How does the RTOC work, and why the Cactus Park Precinct area?

The RTOC is a facility equipped with advanced technology. It also receives information from outside technological resources, such as gunshot detection, license plate readers and mounted cameras.

Police personnel — assistants, officers and supervisors — staff the facility and are tasked with sending officers who are working the streets real time information.

“This is a tremendous investment in our community,” Interim Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan said in the release. “I’m excited about this technology and its ability to keep our community safer in pursuit of our mission to prevent and control crime and ultimately provide justice to victims.”

City officials said the gunshot detection has already proven fruitful, with the gunshot detection equipment leading to hundreds of recovered shell casings, license plate readers identifying suspects in violent crimes and cameras acting as tools for crimes in progress.

“On several occasions when the officers are going to where the initial call is coming from, they’re not aware of the suspect that might be in the area,” Lieutenant Scott Cain, resource lieutenant in the Cactus Park Precinct, said in the release.

“The staff has been able to guide the officers directly to the suspects who could be blocks away from where the incident occurred.”

The Cactus Park Precinct RTOC is the latest for the city. Funding was also approved for an RTOC in the Desert Horizon Precinct, with Hatcher Road in west Sunnyslope as a target, the release said. The site is anticipated to be fully operational within the next year.

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