DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — The DeKalb County government announced that, in addition to its new investments in police salaries and staffing, it’d be breaking ground on a real-time crime center on Friday.
“This is about leveraging technology to prevent and deter crime and quickly apprehend perpetrators,” County CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson said in a statement. “We are building a tech-forward infrastructure that empowers officers with immediate intelligence, speeds up investigations, and improves community safety outcomes.”
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According to the county, officials recently toured several centers in the metro Atlanta area, including the City of Atlanta’s Loudermilk Video Integration Center, Cobb County’s Real-Time Crime Center, and the Dunwoody Police Department Real-Time Crime Center to learn about their best practices and how they built out the necessary technology infrastructure.
The county said the DeKalb County Real-Time Crime Technology will be a “state-of-the-art facility that will centralize surveillance, data analysis, drone technology and emergency response coordination.”
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“This center will enhance how we capture, analyze, and act on real-time data,” William Jones, Chief Information Officer, said. “We are building a tech-forward infrastructure that empowers officers with immediate intelligence, speeds up investigations, and improves community safety outcomes.”
The new investment in crime-fighting technology follows several levels of salary increase for officers, based on position and experience:
- Police Recruits: $61,000 ($64,050 with degree)
- Police Officers: $62,525 ($65,651 with degree)
- Senior Officers: $70,000 ($73,500 with degree)
- Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, and others: 7.1% increase
The salary increases took effect March 1. The county also recently held a hiring event for the police department, with 83 candidates applying. The county said 35 applicants moved forward and six others are in the process as well.
A date for the groundbreaking has not yet been set.
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