Brazos County to take next step on a proposed ‘real-time’ crime center

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – On Tuesday a ‘real-time’ crime center might be one step closer to officially operating in Brazos County.

Early last year Brazos County Commissioners approved a resolution of intent to apply for a grant from the state which would help pay for the center. In December, the sheriff’s office was awarded that grant through the Homeland Security Grant Program for $388,789.05. That money will go towards creating the center as well as furniture, computers, phones, video wall system, and associated software and hardware plus the installation cost.

Brazos County Sheriff Wayne Dicky said this would be the region’s first real-time’ crime and intelligence center and it would be able to provide real-time information to local law enforcement.

“The real-time crime center will be set up so it can collect information for a variety of sources and it can be interrupted and shared with all the participating law enforcement agencies,” Dicky said.

One of the benefits from the project will be information and data going through a central location available to all partner agencies such as Bryan Police Department, College Station Police Department, and DPS, Dicky said.

“They will commit some personal to staffing the center, but that also means that’s a shared burden that we can help get information out effectively, efficiently and respond to crime,” Dicky said.

This new center will be useful for bringing together information on property crimes by piecing together offenses in different geographic areas to come up with suspects and leads, Dicky said.

“If we do have a crime in progress, if we have a robbery or some other crime we can immediately access information about the building where it’s occurring, hopefully, we’ll be able to access video to give us insight into what’s happening in that moment,” Dicky said.

The project was originally started as an effort to work more closely with local law enforcement, Dicky said.

“We have a great relationship in our community with local law enforcement agencies and this is just going to enhance that relationship,” Dicky said.

Discussion with other local law enforcement is still in the area stages, but Dicky said he hopes Tuesday is another step that helps grow that communication.

“My hope is that accomplishes two things and that is that our local law enforcement agencies work closer together and that we have access to information that allows us to be more effective and keep the community safer,” Dicky said.

Partnership for the new center is not limited to Brazos County. Dickey said that any of the seven counties within the Brazos Valley Council of Governments can be a part of it if they are interested.