A new regional intelligence centre opened in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.) in May, giving police forces in the province's Lower Mainland District (LMD) the ability to respond faster to serious crimes.
When a robbery, stabbing or other serious crime takes place in the LMD, the Real Time Intelligence Centre (RTIC) is activated, and the 43 police officers and civilians from various police agencies in the area who staff the centre work to provide intelligence that will help police locate suspects.
"We want to provide our front-line officers and investigators with operational support and build intelligence products around that so when they show up at a serious crime call, we would have already mined multiple databases and would have hopefully surfaced some information that could help further investigations," says S/Sgt. Earl Andersen of the RTIC.
Andersen says that there's so much intelligence in the LMD, but it's sitting in approximately 19 different databases that are scattered across various police agencies. With seconded members working together in one unit, they can have access to all 19 at once.
"For the front-line member, what this means is that if there was a serious stabbing and there were a number of individuals and vehicles involved, everybody in the RTIC could run the partial licence plate numbers or somebody's name and instantly you would get a listing of some possible people and various addresses that the detectives on the front line, within minutes, could follow up with to locate this individual," says A/Commr. Norm Lipinski, the criminal operations officer for the RCMP in B.C.
The RTIC also plans to have radio capabilities to communicate intelligence directly to front-line officers, which Andersen says will be helpful during active calls.
"If we realize that the vehicle is going over the Port Mann Bridge, we'd come on the air and say that vehicle just went over the Port Mann Bridge, so you need to put resources in place to interdict that vehicle," Andersen says.