Grand Traverse County, Michigan spans 601 square miles in Northern Michigan, 23% of which is water. The largest agency in the county, Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office (GTCSO), has 74 officers handling 26,000 - 30,000 annual calls.
Because many neighboring agencies are too small to maintain specialized units like SWAT or dive teams, the Northern Michigan Mutual Aid Task Force (NMMATF) was formed. GTCSO plays a central role, hosting and coordinating shared regional resources.
Narrowing search zones in rescue operations
When a suspected drowning victim disappears beneath the waters of one of the many lakes in Grand Traverse County, the NMMATF sends a dive team. An overturned canoe, a floating fishing rod or a disappearing cell phone signal are clues that can narrow the search area. But once on the lake it is difficult for the dive operation command to track rescue boats or pinpoint searched areas because there aren’t any visual reference points out on the water like there are on land.
Until now, that is.
Detective Sergeant Jarrod Bilacic, a 23-year law enforcement veteran of Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office, led the adoption of Intrepid Response, a mobile frontline public safety mission support solution that allows command staff to map search grids, track rescue boats and use cellular data to narrow search zones in water-related incidents to improve chances of a successful recovery.
While Intrepid Response has been invaluable for mutual-aid dive team rescue missions, its deployment has also changed the way GTCSO and NMMATF handle daily tasks and special operations – vastly enhancing situational awareness and emergency preparedness at all times.
Bilacic first encountered Intrepid Response while working a fugitive case with the U.S. Marshals Service. “While we were working on that case, I saw the marshals were uploading photos and information into a system of some sort,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was, so I asked them ‘What are you guys using to share this information?’ And the marshal that was working with me said, ‘We all have Intrepid.’” As he showed me the system, I thought, “This is a really great solution.”
Bilacic arranged for several demo licenses so deputies at GTCSO could try Intrepid Response for themselves.
What is Intrepid Response?
Intrepid Response is a frontline public safety mission support solution designed for real-time communication, collaboration and coordination so first responders from different agencies can share a common operating picture, and have access to actionable intelligence in real time, empowering informed decision-making. The mobile app is device- and network-agnostic and easy to use.
Intrepid Response consists of several modules that work together to effectively automate public safety workflows:
Activate – A fast and reliable team alerting and notification system that replaces outdated pagers with loud, persistent alerts (with SMS and email backup), automatically activating GPS, incident channels and response workflows with a single tap.
Locate – A real-time interactive mapping and tracking tool that provides a shared operational view with live personnel locations, customizable map markers, file attachments and support capabilities for planning and managing incidents and events.
Connect – A secure, mission-focused communications hub offering encrypted chat, voice messaging, file sharing, task assignments and media annotation – purpose-built to replace unsecured consumer messaging apps in public safety environments.
Report – A mobile and web-based ISC reporting module that streamlines incident management within NIMS guidelines, enabling real-time documentation, automated IAPs with autofill capabilities, and effective resource accountability.
How GTCSO uses Intrepid Response
As Bilacic started diving into Intrepid Response, he realized it had significant value across multiple mission sets, and incorporated Intrepid into standard operating procedures for day-to-day activities like search warrants and surveillance as well as special operations like multijurisdictional task forces, VIP visits and emergency response planning.
Search warrants and surveillance
“We preplan all of our search warrants out on Intrepid now,” said Bilacic. The ops plan, threat assessments, location data, pictures of the suspect, photo and floor plan of the location and other pertinent information gets uploaded to Intrepid so all officers have all the same information at their fingertips.”
Officer assignments and locations can also be tracked during the operation and annotations made on documents and photos.
“For us, it’s very important to have the ability to preplan and execute all in one application that offers both mapping and information sharing,” he said. “The efficiency of having everything in one platform is paramount to easing the stress and the tensions that go along with large scale events.”
Multijurisdictional human trafficking operation
GTCSO is part of a multijurisdictional human trafficking task force with the Department of Homeland Security and Traverse City Police Department.
The first couple of operations the task force ran without Intrepid. “The radio traffic was out of control,” said Bilacic. “People were talking all the time, asking questions about ‘What is the guy driving again? What does he look like?’ Using Intrepid to share intel packets and information like photographs eliminated radio traffic down to a fraction of what it used to be.”
“It works great to be able to put that information into Intrepid so everybody from the command room to the arrest room, our decoys and all our surveillance units are getting the most up to date information available instantly when everybody shares it,” he said.
VIP visits
“Traverse City has become kind of a hotbed for Northern Michigan during election year,” said Bilacic. Preparing for visits from then-candidate President Donald Trump, Senator J.D. Vance, First Lady Jill Biden and Governor Tim Walz in 2024 put many strains on area resources. But with Intrepid Response, the regional task force was prepared.
GTCSO and its partners used Intrepid Response to map out where barricades would be placed, where secure areas would be, where the public could be, where uniformed officers would be visible, where undercover officers would be stationed and where the command post would be.
“With the GPS enabled on [law enforcement’s] phones, from the command post you can look on the map and make sure all the posts are covered,” Bilacic explained. “All the people are where they’re supposed to be and there’s no confusion as to where spectators are supposed to be and where they’re not supposed to be.”
The discreet, encrypted chats, information sharing and mapping features enabled law enforcement to quickly identify suspicious persons. Before Intrepid, figuring out how to accurately direct a drone to track suspicious persons was challenging. With Intrepid, the reporting deputy could report the suspicious person and provide the drone team an exact location where the drone should hover and send live video feedback to the command post.
During President Trump’s visit – which Bilacic monitored remotely from another state – a credible threat came in on a suspect. Using just a name, the analyst was able to do a full workup on the suspect and share his information through Intrepid.
“Everybody that was working that detail now had photos of the suspect, his history, what the perceived threat was and what vehicle he had because we were able to bring in pictures from our license plate readers,” said Bilacic. “Everybody had all that information at their fingertips.”
“Honestly, I don’t know how we would ever go back to the way we used to do it before with text messages and photo messaging,” he added. “It’s just not efficient anymore.”
Preparing for the future
Bilacic is now using Intrepid Response proactively to draw up preplans for schools and businesses in the area. Should the unthinkable happen, staging locations, reunification sites and other locations are predetermined so responders can focus on the mission.
“Intrepid has been phenomenal for us in multiple different facets from investigations to surveillance,” said Bilacic. “It truly is a force multiplier and a game changer for us.”
To schedule a demo or get a free trial, visit Intrepid Networks.
