PUEBLO, Colo. (KKTV) - A couple weeks ago, the Pueblo Police Department relocated one of its four Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) mobile camera trailers to the Bessemer area.
The camera is now located at Mesa Ave. and Elm St.
But this is just one of the improvements they've made to their Real Time Crime Center to help keep the community safe.
The department now has shotspotter in this area as well.
Now, police don't have to wait for a community member to report a crime or shots fired to be able to respond to an incident.
This also gives them a much more accurate location of where the incident is happening.
Deputy Chief for the Pueblo Police Department James Martin explains to 11 News, "We have our Real Time Crime Center technicians who are monitoring our cameras and we have those cameras deployed around the city where we have crime problems identified.
Martin continues saying, "So we can utilize that to see if anything's going on.
"If there's a crime that does occur, we can dispatch officers directly without a call from our citizens.
"If there's a crime that does occur, we can actually use that video for evidence purposes in the case, so it actually gives us some Real Time information and intelligence of what's going on in those areas without having to have a call from a citizen."
This technology is part of the police department's proactive approach they're working to implement.
Additionally, Martin tells 11 News, "We tend to look and see what we have going on in certain areas based off statistics as well as you know messages from our citizens.
"If they are seeing something happening in their neighborhood that hasn't happened previously we can deploy those cameras to see if we can go ahead and have a positive effect on crime in that area.
"It's really important you know the technology that we are implementing in the Real Time Crime Center.
"It's a force multiplier with our staffing issues and we're seeing huge, huge successes on what we're doing with the Real Time Crime Center."
Mentioning the department's plans to grow the Real Time Crime Center, Martin says, "We are installing cameras in the parks, so we have five parks that we've identified that we're going to put cameras in and those will directly be integrated into the Real Time Crime Center.
"But we also are installing cameras on some of the city buildings that we don't have cameras on now, like City Hall is getting a whole new camera array installed.
"So that will help us especially you know when we have events down there when you talk about the Chile fest and you know things going on on Union (Ave.) we'll have a better surveillance system in place to make sure that our citizens are safe when they are out enjoying themselves."
The Pueblo Police Department wants to foster a good relationship with the community, so Martin tells 11 News, "One of the things that we have coming up here is on July 16 from 4-7 P.M. here in the community room at the police department, we are going to have a Community Connect Meeting, which is an opportunity for businesses to see how they can connect their business surveillance cameras with the Real Time Crime Center.
"So I think it’s really important that if we have business partners in the community that want to come and check that out.
"We will have the vendors here that do work with us in the Real Time Crime Center, we’ll be doing tours of the Real Time Crime Center, so they can get a better understanding of how they can partner with us to help keep our community safe."
On top of the mobile camera trailers and the shotspotter, the police department is introducing new technology.
As Martin tells 11 News, "The other thing that we've done is we just recently stood up our first, 'Drone as First Responder' station where we're trained and we're flying it now to calls.
"We're still in the infancy stages of that program just learning how the drone works and getting comfortable flying it but it's very exciting and we are currently working on getting the other two stations up and running here within the next few months.
"We can deploy to many different situations and if an officer needs a drone we can deploy the drone to where the officer is and we can also deploy the drone to calls for service that we feel are high priority that we need to have a drone on scene quickly.
"We can get the drone on scene providing video images to our officers and to our Real Time Crime Center generally within 60 to 90 seconds.
"We're going to get it there before officers get on scene and they'll be able to know exactly what's going on."
Explaining why these improvements are so vital for protecting the community, Martin tells 11 News, "When you talk about affecting crime in a community, our Real Time Crime Center technicians have solved cases by the video evidence they've seen going on at the time.
"We've had cases where we've caught shootings on camera. We've caught carjackings on camera. We've caught drug deals on camera.