New Mexico State Police: Innovating CVE with an integrated approach

• New Mexico’s commercial vehicle enforcement (CVE) unit struggled with inefficient reporting systems, siloed data sources, and data sharing challenges. 

• Integration unified CVE data systems and facilitated interagency data sharing, which streamlined reporting, strengthened situational awareness, and enabled measurable impacts. 

• CVE personnel can now receive live alerts of commercial vehicle crashes and incidents involving problem carriers or ineligible drivers. 

• The High Priority Innovative Technology Deployment grant funds data integration technology for commercial vehicle safety entities. Applications are open now and due on March 7, 2025.

Fatal crashes involving commercial vehicles are on the rise in New Mexico, climbing from 57 in 2017 to 79 in 2022. As the state saw its fatal crash rate rise by 53% in that time frame, the New Mexico State Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement unit (NMSP-CVE) faced growing pressure to combat worrying trends on the road. 

The NMSP-CVE is responsible for reducing commercial vehicle crashes on New Mexico’s roadways. But historically, inefficient systems for managing and reporting data have hindered the agency’s ability to police proactively. 

“The longer it takes for us to compile that data, the issue becomes more compounded, and you're never able to make a meaningful difference because you can’t be proactive,” NMSP-CVE Capt. Joseph Romero told us. 

But things are turning a corner for the NMSP-CVE. In 2024, the agency secured a federal CMV safety grant to invest in Peregrine, a data integration platform that harmonizes and optimizes information from disparate source systems. Now, New Mexico’s CVE personnel can proactively allocate resources based on historical trends and live alerts. 

“I can see where accidents are happening in real time,” Romero said. “I can make an actionable decision to pinpoint my resources and try to tend to those areas.” 

Interagency collaboration for safer roadways 

New Mexico is the fifth-largest U.S. state by land area and home to more than 100 law enforcement agencies. With fewer than 120 officers, the NMSP-CVE relies on information from other agencies to determine where to allocate personnel and resources. But ineffective systems have hindered that cross-agency cooperation. 

Overcoming inefficient crash reporting 

Before Peregrine, the NMSP-CVE lacked timely access to crash and traffic data from other agencies in New Mexico. 

“As a state, we don’t share all of these data points for crashes,” Romero explained, “We hope that [other agencies] get all the crashes into NMDOT [New Mexico Department of Transportation], and we’re hoping that they are accurate.” 

Upon receiving crash reports from other agencies — often months after the incidents happened — CVE personnel had to manually review each report to see if the incident involved a CMV and met criteria for a reportable crash. By the time they gathered the information they needed, it would be too late to deploy resources and make a difference. Romero said some of the crash reports coming across his desk are already a year old. 

Peregrine provides the NMSP-CVE with real-time crash data from other jurisdictions — long before any reports come in — by sharing and integrating data from other participating agencies. 

“I can constantly monitor it,” Romero said. "If [the other agencies are] on board, and their data’s already there, I get to analyze it in real time.” 

Sharing data across agencies 

“I can see where accidents are happening in real time. I can make an actionable decision to pinpoint my resources and try to tend to those areas.” —Capt. Joseph Romero, NMSP-CVE

Peregrine breaks down information silos and supports stronger interagency collaboration by joining data from participating agencies' various systems, including: 

• Computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems 

• Records management systems (RMS) 

• Traffic and criminal software (TraCS) and other traffic citations systems 

• License plate recognition (LPR) systems 

• Smart roadside data systems and other sensor data 

In New Mexico, CVE personnel can now access critical data from all participating agencies on a single, unified asset. So when a partner agency is dispatched to any CMV-related incident, Peregrine can share that information to NMSP-CVE in real time. 

“If dispatch enters it in and it’s classified as a commercial motor vehicle, and all of a sudden we start seeing these little dots starting to drop everywhere, then we have a hotspot,” Romero said. “Now I have specialized teams and units under my command that I can deploy to those areas to be able to make a difference.” 

Data sharing also uses data from partner agencies to notify the NMSP-CVE when unfit CMV drivers — such as those with ineligible commercial driver’s licenses, too many violations to legally drive a CMV, or records of evading ports of entry — get pulled over. 

“When we take the drivers and companies who are ineligible and shouldn’t be on the roadway, we make our roadways safer,” he said. 

Integration for data-informed CVE 

By unifying data from the NMSP-CVE and partner agencies on a single collective platform, Peregrine improves situational awareness for CVE personnel and enables them to efficiently identify, track, and address CMV trends across the state. 

Data queries and real-time alerts 

Peregrine users can set up live alerts based on data queried from their source systems and other participating agencies’ systems. For the NMSP-CVE, Peregrine can query: 

• CMV crash rates statewide and within specific districts, counties, and regions 

• USDOT numbers and their previous contacts with participating law enforcement agencies throughout the state 

• How many times a CMV has violated federal, state, or local laws 

• Historical law enforcement contact records and connections for all CMV drivers, carriers, vehicles, and USDOT numbers 

• Commercial driver’s license (CDL) drivers and carriers who are frequently in contact with law enforcement 

Using that data, Peregrine can ping CVE personnel with real-time alerts when: 

• The CMV crash rate spikes in a specific region, creating a “hotspot” 

• A CMV driver who was previously flagged for driving without a valid CDL is stopped by an officer from a participating agency 

• A trucking company that was previously flagged for violations is caught operating with the same USDOT number (and often under a different business name — these are called “chameleon carriers”) 

• A driver is caught using a foreign CDL that was previously confiscated 

Peregrine can also disseminate alerts through its mobile app. These live alerts facilitate timelier incident response and better situational awareness for the NMSP-CVE. 

“Before Peregrine, there was no alerting,” Romero said. “If we can have something running in the background and helping our officers make their decisions by those alerts, I think that you’ll see a huge difference.”

Quantifying impact 

Peregrine allows CVE officials to compare historical trends with developing situations to determine whether an intervention was effective. Romero recalled a scenario in which state representatives asked his unit to deploy in Clayton, New Mexico, which was becoming a hotspot for CMV crashes and port runners, or commercial drivers evading ports of entry. 

To inform operational strategy, Romero used Peregrine to analyze the previous six months of CMV data in Clayton. His CVE unit then went to Clayton for a weeklong impact operation, after which Romero kept an eye on new data coming in from the area to see if the intervention had made a difference. 

“And all of a sudden, for the next three or four months, there were zero crashes,” he told us. “We were able to run the data after the fact, and there were less crashes and less port runners.” 

Securing CVE grant funding for data integration technology 

Each year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) administers the High Priority Innovative Technology Deployment (ITD) grant to support tech development in the CMV safety space. U.S. states and territories implementing CMV safety programs can leverage the $2 million discretionary ITD grant to support: 

• Safer, more productive motor carriers, CMVs, and drivers 

• Data-driven initiatives to create more effective CMV safety programs 

• Secure, streamlined sharing of commercial vehicle data within and between states and FMCSA 

• More efficient CVE operations through the automated collection, transfer, and display of data 

• Reduced costs associated with enforcing federal and state safety regulations 

The ITD grant awards up to $2 million per project per eligible agency. Peregrine enables real-time technology integration for CMV safety, which falls within the ITD grant’s eligible use parameters. 

For fiscal year 2025, ITD grant applications are open now and due on March 7, 2025. Peregrine can help your agency’s CMV safety program secure real-time data sharing and integration through ITD grant funding. Contact us to learn how we can support your grant application.

Peregrine is built on AWS GovCloud.