Real Time Crime Fighting

With James Onalfo of the NYPD

BM speaks to Commissioner James Onalfo about how he has transformed IT for the NYPD.

Over 20 years of data is available to every officer

“Through a combination of effective processes, speedy information and key detective work we are able to apprehend criminals incredibly quickly.”
-James Onalfo, CIO of the NYPD

James Onalfo became CIO of the NYPD in 2003 when he was approached by Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the position. Despite being retired Onalfo accepted the role to overhaul the entire IT infrastructure, which had not seen investment in 15 years.

Onalfo was well suited to run the complex IT operations of the NYPD after years of serving as a corporate IT executive, and has since transformed business processes at the police department. One of Onalfo’s most significant accomplishments was the development of the real time crime center. “Prior to the real time crime center, we had billions of pieces of information stored within outdated databases, which were extremely difficult to mine and awkward to access,” says Onalfo. “We started building a crime data warehouse by pulling together information and after a year and a half were able to announce and introduce the real time crime center.”

Now, when detectives get to the scene of a crime, they can look at what might have happened there in the past 24 hours in a 100-yard radius that may have precipitated the particular crime. “Through a combination of effective processes, speedy information and key detective work we are able to apprehend criminals incredibly quickly,” says Onalfo.

New technologies

The center has taken advantage of new technologies allowing detectives to solve their crimes much faster, which has been a major enhancement. Within data mining for example, there are a number of tools available, such as what Onalfo calls the “super finder”. “If we are looking for a detective we can put a query together on everything about them and pull all that information back in minutes, which we couldn’t do in the past,” he says.

Over 20 years of data is now available online today through the real time crime center, available to every officer and fleet detective across the city. Every 911 call is streamed over to the center, and with 11.5 million emergency calls every year that adds up to a huge amount of data. “By making all the information available online, we’ve been able to take away the grunt work from the detectives so that they can focus on the work that they know how to do best, which is hard-nosed detective work,’ says Onalfo.

And Onalfo hasn’t stopped there; in addition to the real time crime center he has also overhauled all the NYPD precincts. By putting together new, modern networks there are major connections in place throughout the city and the precincts themselves have also become “smarter”. “Prior to the renovation maybe five to 10 people could be online in a precinct at one time,” explains Onalfo, “but now everybody can go online. By standardizing all of our tools we have seen productivity shoot up.” And it is due to this growth the NYPD is about to go through a third generation of upgrades.

Support

Onalfo is keen to point to out that it would not have been possible to transform the NYP without the top down support from Commissioner Kelly. “He has been an innovator of many, many programs within the police department and instrumental in supporting and approving the programs that we've put forth,” says Onalfo. “And I have to give him an enormous amount of credit for the progress we made here at the NYPD.”

Extra info…

New technologies
As well as strategy and operations changes, Onalfo has implemented many new technologies to the NYPD, including:

License plate readers:  “This is where we can identify a stolen car by reading the license plate with a computer tool that is installed on a police car. A phenomenal technology.”

Hot spot database updates: “In each patrol car is a heavy duty database and within 100 yards of a precinct it is possible to automatically update the databases because it is a hot spot, much like you would find in Starbucks.”