- Agency name: Hamilton County Real Time Information Center.
- Participating agencies: Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office (lead agency), Hamilton County Public Safety Communications, Carmel Police Department, Noblesville Police.
- Planned participating agency: Westfield Police Department, expected later this summer.
- Agencies served: All eight Hamilton County law enforcement agencies and 10 fire departments.
- Regional RTIC staffing: Lt. Brian Niec, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, is the full-time director. Four full-time operators are assigned to the RTIC. Two are analysts and the other two are sworn officer DFR pilots. Four additional personnel split their time between the RTIC and their home department, Carmel Police Department or Noblesville Police Department.
- Population served: ~380,000 residents of Hamilton County.
- RTIC launched: November 2024.
- RTIC operating hours: Monday to Friday 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Hours expanding to 8 a.m.-2 a.m. Monday to Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.-2 a.m. this summer.
| DOWNLOAD: Choose the right real-time policing model for your agency
The challenge: Making regional collaboration operational
Regional collaboration, from shared dispatch to crimefighting, was already the standard when the Hamilton County Real Time Information Center opened in 2024. The county’s eight law enforcement agencies and 10 fire departments had shared CAD, RMS and GIS systems since 2007, with dispatch merging in 2011.
For those departments, a regional RTIC didn’t represent a challenge, but an opportunity to:
- Strengthen existing collaborative public safety relationships.
- Respond, investigate and apprehend criminals who were often operating in multiple jurisdictions.
- Leverage the existing shared dispatch and software platforms, as well as municipal camera systems and license plate readers.
- Responsibly share costs for personnel, software and hardware.
“A lot of what we do in Hamilton County is reliant on our neighbors because the criminals that we deal with, they’re hitting all of our jurisdictions,” said Lt. Brian Niec, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office Regional Real Time Information Center Director.
“We’re able to track these groups and criminals faster and resolve the crimes a lot quicker, knowing that we have charges pending or we have other cases on these individuals rather than waiting on each jurisdiction to file their own charges or to confer with the neighboring jurisdiction to make sure that’s the same person because we’re sitting next to each other in the same room.”
The Hamilton County RTIC operators, regardless of their home department, act as an information hub and serve the law enforcement, fire and medical personnel from every jurisdiction in the county.
“They deal with the highest priority call no matter what that call is and what jurisdiction it comes from,” Niec said.
The solution: A regional RTIC built on shared systems
Niec describes the center as the first multi-jurisdictional RTIC task force in the country. For departments with a long history of collaboration, shared services and software platforms, it was a natural evolution to collaboratively launch an RTIC.
The departments also had strong relationships from working together every day, especially on the street level. With positive relationships and shared systems, the planning for a regional RTIC was focused on the logistics of cost sharing and staffing to make the RTIC a success.
An MOU between the departments governs the regional RTIC through a board comprised of the sheriff and chiefs from the participating departments. The sheriff appointed Niec to administer the day-to-day operations of the RTIC including hours of operation, software usage, staffing and DFR deployments, as well as managing the RTIC budget and forecasting future operational needs and growth.
How the Hamilton County RTIC operates
Within two seconds of a dispatcher answering a 911 call, RTIC operators have a call location, are able to listen in and begin taking action, such as looking up suspect information or launching a drone, as the 911 call taker receives information and begins to assign responders.
“Several times the drone is first to the scene because the CAD call hasn’t been created yet,” Niec said. “The DFR pilot can’t even say anything on the radio because nobody knows that call exists yet, which is incredible.”
For Niec, it is critical that the RTIC supports the dispatchers and field personnel by doing whatever they can to make their lives easier with intelligence, directions or call history.
“We are a support function for patrol and investigations,” Niec said.
One of the RTIC’s goals is to be an information hub, quickly finding information officers might need or delivering suspect or scene intelligence before personnel arrive.
“If it’s a school camera, LPR or community camera, we’re the hub for that,” Niec said. “We try to tie everything together as best we can to be the solution for whatever problem they may encounter.”
RTIC operators are civilian or sworn staff from the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and sworn officers from the Carmel Police Department and Noblesville Police Department. Regardless of their home department, operators assist with any officer or fire chief from any department in the county.
The results: A 15% “win” rate across public safety calls
“We operate on a 15%-win percentage,” Niec said.
In Hamilton County, a “win” is any call where the outcome would have been different without the RTIC’s involvement. Niec explained that 15% might not sound like a lot, but with more than 800,000 calls for service per year and limited weekday hours, the RTIC is making a difference on thousands of calls.
“That’s a significant (number) when you’re talking about missing kids, endangered adults, suicidal people, wanted people and the whole gamut of public safety calls,” Niec said.
When RTIC operators can deliver information to officers in the field that the suspect has a warrant in other jurisdictions or is a suspect in a similar crime in a neighboring community, officers are able to act quicker to investigate and apprehend suspects.
For example, when dispatch received a report of a door-to-door fraudster, an RTIC operator compared the suspect to a similar complaint and doorbell camera video from the day before in a different community. Making the connection of multiple complaints for the same suspect, spread over time and space, led to apprehension and charges, which benefited both communities.
Why Hamilton County chose RTIC over RTCC
Hamilton County is intentionally a “real time information center” rather than a “real time crime center” because they want to serve all public safety. From victim and fire location to searching for missing persons, the RTIC is able to serve all public safety departments.
“We wanted to not limit ourselves to being a crime center because the technology we’re employing is beneficial to public safety, regardless of whether it’s a crime related or not,” Niec said.
A DFR operator, with a drone already in the air, flew the drone to a structure fire as it was being reported to a 911 dispatcher. The operator had live video of the structure three minutes before police arrived and five minutes before the fire department arrived. Overhead drone video did not show obvious visual signs of the fire, its size or location. The drone operator switched to the drone’s thermal imaging camera and quickly found the fire location, which was larger than was being reported.
“We were able to direct the fire department '(fire) is second floor, northwest corner,’ telling them exactly where the fire was, based off thermal capabilities with the DFR,” Niec said.
In another case, a caller reported a sudden cardiac arrest patient. Because of uncertainty about the caller’s and patient’s location, a DFR operator flew to the reported location and determined the patient was at a different nearby location.
“The DFR was able to figure out exactly where the patient was and direct police and fire to that cardiac arrest quicker because we weren’t reliant upon the caller to explain it,” Niec said.
Lessons for launching a regional RTIC
Niec is regularly asked for advice on launching a regional RTIC and is happy to share his lessons learned and advice to department and civic leaders, over the phone or face-to-face. If your agency is considering a regional RTIC, here are words of experience from Niec.
- For Hamilton County, the most valuable partner contribution was not money. It was people. The right people with a willingness to collaborate and a commitment to serve dispatchers and field personnel are more important than the hardware and software.
- That being said, connected hardware and software systems are crucial to collecting and sharing information between agencies and field personnel.
- During the planning phase, top civic and public safety leaders should not set policy that will box in the RTIC before it launches and instead enable directors and operators to figure out the details of operations, software and hardware as it begins to serve the people on the street.
- Get started. You’re not going to be able to anticipate every use case, integration or need. Mission-focused personnel with a service mindset will learn how to best support the personnel in the field.
- Ask for help. Niec wants to hear from you and answer your questions. He feels fortunate to have a chief and department that wants to collaborate with and support other departments because when it comes to crime, regional is not confined to a county boundary and the criminals in your jurisdiction might also be operating in Hamilton County.
“The biggest thing is to ask,” Niec said. “Find the person, agency or task force that is most closely resembling what you want to build and pick their brains about it. We want to be involved in everybody else’s success as well.”
Contact Lt. Brian Niec via email at brian.niec@hamiltoncounty.in.gov.
