Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 3/3/17. CPD Police Chief Fred Fletcher speaks as the Chattanooga Police Department hosts a walk-through of its centralized intelligence, technology, analysis, and investigative center housed at CPD’s Police Service Center on Friday.
Chattanooga police are putting the finishing touches on a new centralized hub where investigators will use live data to keep a close eye on the city's streets.
Construction of the department's "Real Time Intelligence Center" will finish within the next few days, police Chief Fred Fletcher said during a press conference Friday. Then, the department will slowly begin to add staff and resources to the center in the coming weeks.
When finished, the Real Time Intelligence Center will display live video from cameras on streets across town and will house the department's crime analysis unit. Fletcher expects data from the city's license plate readers to also feed into the center.
The room, with a wall of monitors and several individual workstations, will function both as a day-to-day hub for data analysis and as a control center during major incidents in the city.
"The vision here is to bring the tacit knowledge of our personnel and marry it with technology," said Lt. John Chambers, who led the project.
The Real Time Intelligence Center was designed with growth in mind, he added, and has space set aside for law enforcement agencies in neighboring jurisdictions to send personnel to work or collaborate.
At first, the center will be staffed 10 hours a day, Fletcher said, and that will later increase to 20 hours a day and, eventually, to 24 hours a day. The first 15 live-feed cameras will be up and running on city streets by May.