Lee County, FLA - Fighting crime and trying to get criminals off the streets with state of the art technology - whether it's inside your neighborhood or even in schools. The Lee County Sheriff's Office has the ability to track what's happening in Lee County with their Real Time Intelligence Center.
The Real Time Intelligence Center kicked off in 2020 and Sheriff Carmine Marceno says it's a game changer. A game changer that leads deputies to the right places - as agents inside the RTIC work diligently to help assist the department track down crime in real time.
"The analysts are they work for the Lee County Sheriff's Office and they are trained they know exactly how to utilize the different programs to access different databases," says Sheriff Marceno.
Sheriff Marceno showed Fox 4's Elyse Chengery exactly how it all works... Using intelligence to deploy the correct resources with traffic cameras, community cameras, live drone detection, social media monitoring, facial recognition and mapping inside Lee County Schools.
"So I made a commitment since day one - safe kid's safe schools that’s my top priority kids go to school to learn not to worry about being a victim of a crime. Unfortunately, we live in a world with active shooters. We have the ability to press at your fingertip and be inside the schools right now if anything happens real-time so we know what’s going on at all times, we have the ability if someone says something took place in the school we can go back and search that camera which we have and tell you who committed the crime who was there," says Sheriff Marceno.
The Sheriff says it also plays a pivotal role in missing person cases... to track where deputies, helicopters and dogs need to go in search efforts.
And the cost? 2 million dollars... So where does the money come from to fund all of this? Sheriff Marceno explains, "This is all seizure money so bad money made good and that’s a big deal zero cost to the tax payer and literally working smarter and harder as one cohesive team having the ability to go back at any time if we have a lost or endangered person entering that license plate the analysts are working as they drive through our county it alerts us we know exactly their movement and where they are."
The plan going forward... to utilize this and continue to update more technology to keep residents safe.
"Having the ability to utilize that technology to respond in a better way in a smarter way and also to go back and if someone commits a crime here to make certain we know what the facts are and put them in jail. I’ll say this as the Sheriff everyone wants safety and security, as my top priority residents of our county the great residents of our county rest well we’re watching, we’re ready for anything that comes our way and you're going to be safe," Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
