KEY IDEAS:
- Albuquerque Police Department (APD) investigators previously had to search across disconnected systems, including records, CAD, and license plate recognition data, to generate leads.
- APD integrated more than 20 data sources into Peregrine, giving personnel a unified platform to search and analyze investigative data.
- Unified data helps investigators connect vehicles, individuals, prior incidents, and addresses faster, reducing manual research and context switching.
- In two 2024 cases, integrated data helped APD identify suspects faster, while LPR interoperability limitations still created extra investigative steps.
💡 ALBUQUERQUE POLICE DEPARTMENT AT A GLANCE:
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Established: 1898
Population: Approx. 560,326
Sworn count: Approx. 913
Total personnel: Approx. 1,140
Sources: APD, U.S. Census
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Albuquerque Police Department (APD) juggles dozens of tech platforms in its data ecosystem, including:
- Records management systems
- Computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems
- Body-worn cameras
- Gunshot detectors
- LPR systems
Before deploying a solution to integrate those platforms, APD analysts and detectives had to toggle between several source systems to manually gather information, draw connections between disparate data points, and generate reports or leads.
APD onboarded Peregrine to unify and standardize data from more than 20 of its data sources in a single, integrated asset, complete with real-time data updates and advanced analytical capabilities. Peregrine has streamlined analysis, reporting, and lead generation for personnel across the agency, enabling APD to improve operations and close cases faster — including an aggravated assault case and a sexual assault case in 2024.
But the investigations also exposed a persistent challenge: Not every law enforcement technology vendor makes agency data easy to integrate. In both cases, limitations in APD’s LPR platform created extra steps for detectives.
These cases illustrate both the power of effective data integration and the drawbacks of vendor lock-in in law enforcement, highlighting the industry’s growing need for open and interoperable technologies.
“If we didn’t have Peregrine, we could still do our job, but it would be difficult — maybe two or three times longer to make those connections and gather data. If for any reason we had to do our jobs without Peregrine in the future, it would for sure be frustrating.”
Investigator Dustin Shrouf
Albuquerque Police Department
Why interoperability matters in law enforcement investigations
🧠 WHAT IS INTEROPERABILITY IN LAW ENFORCEMENT TECHNOLOGY?
Interoperability is the ability for agencies to freely access, move, and analyze their data across platforms, including in third-party integration solutions. In law enforcement, interoperable systems help personnel search records, CAD data, LPR data, reports, and other sources in a unified platform, without manually switching between disconnected tools.
A robust data integration and analytics solution equips law enforcement leaders with the right information to make their best decisions in their most critical moments. But for any agency to realize the full potential of data integration, the agency's source systems must be integration-friendly — that is, interoperable with third-party platforms.
In law enforcement, where tech stacks are ever-growing and agencies are generating unprecedented amounts of data, interoperability is non-negotiable. Interoperability directly affects how quickly personnel can search information, generate leads, and act on investigative connections.
READ MORE → Open and Interoperable: Advocating for Better Data Stewardship
To get the most out of their data and do their best work, public safety agencies must be able to access and move their information in bulk, at their discretion, or else face the long-term consequences of vendor lock-in and data fragmentation:
- Hindered interagency collaboration
- Slower investigations
- Higher maintenance costs
- Unclear data ownership
Still, some police technology providers limit how agencies can access, export, or integrate their own data with third-party systems. This is a growing problem in the law enforcement industry, particularly among LPR providers.
🔎 WHAT IS VENDOR LOCK-IN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT TECHNOLOGY?
Vendor lock-in occurs when a technology provider limits an agency’s ability to access, export, or integrate its own data with other systems. This can make investigations slower, increase long-term costs, and reduce an agency’s flexibility to adopt new tools.
How integrated data helped APD identify an aggravated assault suspect
“[Peregrine] probably cut the time in half in identifying the vehicle. —Investigator Dustin Shrouf, Albuquerque Police Department"
APD’s aggravated assault investigation showed how even partial integration can help investigators move faster — and how incomplete interoperability can still slow them down.
One of APD’s LPR vendors limits how some data can be shared with third-party systems, but it does allow users to query by partial plate numbers in a third-party platform. That partial integration helped investigators identify a suspect in a 2024 aggravated assault case.
Using a partial plate number to identify the vehicle
Investigators at APD had obtained CCTV footage of a vehicle involved in an aggravated assault, but the footage only captured part of the vehicle’s license plate number. Investigators took that partial plate number to Peregrine, which allowed them to search it against police reports, CAD data, and LPR data simultaneously.
The search returned a police report that matched the vehicle’s description and contained its full plate number. Because APD’s LPR vendor does not allow certain data, including historical records and photos, to integrate with third-party platforms, officers then had to pivot to the LPR platform to complete their investigation.
Connecting the vehicle to prior armed robbery cases
Officers searched the suspect vehicle’s full plate number in the LPR system to find the vehicle’s history, which revealed that the car had been linked to two previous armed robbery cases. Investigators searched the armed robbery offenders in Peregrine and found that one of them matched the description provided by the aggravated assault victim. Officers later used a photo array to confirm the aggravated assault suspect’s identity.
Instead of having to search through the agency’s LPR, CAD, and police report systems separately to find clues and manually draw connections, officers were able to identify the aggravated assault suspect with just a partial plate number and two data platforms: Peregrine and the LPR platform.
CASE STUDY → How the Lathrop Police Department Uses Integrated Video Data To Solve Crimes
How unified data reduced manual research time
“It probably cut the time in half in identifying the vehicle,” said Investigator Dustin Shrouf, who worked the aggravated assault case, about Peregrine. “I would have had to use two or three other sources to make that attempt to identify the vehicle and to make that connection to the prior case identifying the subject.”
He added that being able to search multiple sources simultaneously in a data integration platform had become an integral part of APD's investigations.
“If we didn’t have Peregrine, we could still do our job, but it would be difficult — maybe two or three times longer to make those connections and gather data,” Shrouf said. “If for any reason we had to do our jobs without Peregrine in the future, it would for sure be frustrating.”
Still, had the LPR vendor practiced true interoperability and enabled a full replication of APD’s LPR database in Peregrine, officers may have identified both the vehicle and the suspect in just one platform, streamlining the investigation even more.
🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY: Unified data helped APD investigators turn a partial plate number into a vehicle match, connect that vehicle to prior cases, and confirm a suspect faster.
How integrated data helped APD identify a sexual assault suspect
“Peregrine is instrumental for plate searches, person searches, and as a one-stop shop for all of our data in one place."
—Investigator Kevin Schlegel, Albuquerque Police Department
A second investigation revealed a similar pattern: Integrated CAD and report data helped investigators connect the vehicle to a suspect, but limited LPR data access forced them to move between systems.
Investigators at APD were pursuing a sexual assault case in which the suspect drove a vehicle with a removed license plate. Officers were able to identify the suspect vehicle using only two data sources: an LPR system and Peregrine.
Using vehicle history to identify the suspect
Because the LPR system does not allow vehicle description data, such as make and model, to integrate with third-party platforms, investigators had to search the suspect vehicle’s description in the LPR system to find a license plate number. From there, they pivoted to Peregrine, where they input the plate number and identified a suspect based on CAD records and police reports.
Though the vehicle was not registered to the suspect, he had been documented as using the vehicle in previous incidents where he had not removed the license plate. Investigators confirmed the suspect’s identity with the agency’s sex crimes unit, then used Peregrine to find the suspect’s previous addresses, which eventually led to his arrest.
🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY: Integrated CAD and report data helped APD investigators connect vehicle history to a suspect, while limited LPR interoperability added extra steps.
How unified data helped investigators generate leads faster
Shrouf said the ability to search against multiple data sources at once made it faster and easier to generate leads in this investigation.
“Being able to see any CAD linked to that one vehicle and any report linked to that one vehicle in one search set cuts time down in the research we have to do and has been more successful than having to use two, three, four, or more databases to try to identify the vehicle or get the vehicle history,” Shrouf said. “In this case, the vehicle history led us to who was using the vehicle.”
READ MORE → Breaking Down Silos To Connect Agencies, Communities, and Technologies
Without Peregrine, officers would have had to manually search through several data systems, including the agency’s reporting and CAD systems, to find the evidence that helped them identify the suspect in this case — a process which would have been “nearly impossible,” according to Investigator Kevin Schlegel.
“Peregrine is instrumental for plate searches, person searches, and as a one-stop shop for all of our data in one place,” Schlegel said. “Peregrine is something I use on a daily, almost hourly basis.”
Similarly to the aggravated assault case, however, the LPR vendor’s non-interoperable practices added steps to the sexual assault investigation. If APD was able to integrate the full LPR dataset into Peregrine, investigators may have been able to identify the vehicle and suspect in one fell swoop, without context switching between the LPR platform and Peregrine.
💡HOW PEREGRINE STREAMLINED INVESTIGATIONS FOR THE ALBUQUERQUE POLICE DEPARTMENT
- Helped investigators search across CAD records, police reports, and available LPR data simultaneously
- Surfaced connections between vehicles, individuals, prior incidents, and addresses
- Reduced the need to manually search multiple disconnected databases
- Helped personnel generate leads faster during vehicle-related investigations
Why data interoperability matters for modern police departments
LPR systems and other modern technologies can help investigators move faster, but agencies only realize their full value when those systems work with the rest of their data environment. To truly maximize the value of these tech platforms, law enforcement leaders must be able to identify and prioritize the technology partners that respect agencies’ data ownership and practice true interoperability with third-party solutions.
And when it comes to interoperability, the red flags aren’t always obvious — some vendors talk the talk in the beginning, but don’t walk the walk once the contract is signed.
🔎 WHY SHOULD POLICE DEPARTMENTS PRIORITIZE INTEROPERABLE TECHNOLOGY?
Interoperable technology helps law enforcement agencies access, control, and use their own data across systems, reducing manual research, improving investigative speed, and giving personnel a more complete operational picture.
Leaders in public safety can protect their agencies and help move their industry forward by cutting through the noise, asking the right questions at the right time, and demanding a better data experience from their tech providers. To learn more about advocating for open data practices in law enforcement, download our e-book, “Own Your Data: Interoperability and the Risks of Vendor Lock-In.”
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