Real Time Crime Center offers Columbus Police information that leads to arrests
Editor's Note: This is the third of a four-part series. Links to other articles in the series can be found at the bottom of this article.
COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — When the Columbus Police Department's Real Time Crime Center began ramping up more than a year ago, some officers and detectives on the street were skeptical about just how much the cameras would help.
It didn't take long for them to embrace the new technology. Listen Cpl. Antonio Burgess.
'It cuts down on investigative time,' he said. 'We can solve cases a lot quicker.'
Burgess is a property crimes investigator. Listen to how he solved a series of burglaries.
'This guy ended up breaking into about at least a dozen convivence stores,' he said.
Investigators thought the crimes were connected, but were not close to solving them. Burgess told the Real Time Crime Center what he knew — times and locations.
'We figured out his pattern,' Burgess said. 'He would usually break into these stores between the hours of 2 o'clock and 6 o'clock. … By him doing it late at night we knew that there were not a lot of vehicles on the roadways. So, with a lot of hard work we passed it on to the Real Time Crime Center.'
An analyst spent hours looking at roadway cameras.
'They were able to give us a car, a possible suspect vehicle,' Burgess said. 'The location of that car pretty much – the same car now – matched all of the times and dates that these stores were getting broken into. … It would have took us months to go out and physically go up to stores.'
The Real Time Crime Center also comes into play on the most violent crimes.
Sgt. Adam Moyer of the Columbus Police Department has his own story of how it helped in an investigation.
'Back in the beginning of March, I had a shooting at Elizabeth Canty Homes,' Moyer said. 'An individual shot among an occupied vehicle. Utilizing the cameras that were in the apartment complex, the Real Time Crime Center was able to view the victim as he drives into the complex and the suspect coming from a specific apartment.'
The city cameras inside the complex and business cameras outside Canty led police to a suspect,' Moyer said. 'And instead of weeks, it took just hours to feed that video to the detectives.
'My next day into work, within an hour of being at work, I had video footage coming from the Real Time crime center.'
Sometimes it's quicker than that, according to Chief Stoney Mathis.
'Having a Real Time Crime Center puts that information together in real time and feeds that information to the detectives, almost before they get on the scene,' Mathis said. 'As a matter of fact, we have had the Real Time Crime Scene provide information to the police officers while they are en route to the scene.'
Beyond the Beat continues in these articles:
Part 1: Columbus Real Time Crime Center at forefront of dramatic change in policing
Part 2: How civilians are changing the way police work is done
Part 4: Beyond the Beat: How the Real Time Crime Center is shaping the future of policing
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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