Goodyear police chief recommends city build standalone real-time crime center; council signals support for phase 1

Police Chief Brian Nissitt told the Goodyear City Council on March 17 that the police department had completed a strategic-plan task to study and evaluate creation of a real-time crime center and recommended the city build a standalone center in two phases.

Nissitt said the center would gather live data from city and partner cameras, CAD and records-management feeds and commercial sources to give officers “a fuller picture of what is happening in real time” and to improve response, officer safety and case clearance. “For me, the most important question to ask when discussing any project is the why,” he said.

The chief outlined a two-phase approach. Phase 1 would colocate the real-time crime center within the city’s emergency operations/communications footprint and acquire a commercial RTCC platform, hardware (video wall, computers, monitors, radios), and integrate CAD and RMS systems, the city’s Flock and intersection cameras and other city camera feeds. Nissitt recommended staffing Phase 1 with one officer, one tactical dispatcher, one crime analyst and a systems engineer requested by IT. He said Phase 1 could be roughly an 18-month effort.

Phase 2 would add hardware and personnel to expand capabilities, including a “drone as first responder” (DFR) program and additional tactical dispatchers and analysts. Nissitt described two DFR approaches used elsewhere: one model with roughly a 45‑minute flight time and quick battery swaps, the other a beehive/rotation model…