How data integration helps 4 Florida agencies protect 2.5 million residents

“After only a few days, we were able to see Peregrine’s value. They came onsite and quickly developed resources that were helpful during an emergency. … Manatee County residents and first responders alike will be safer thanks to our partnership with Peregrine.” —Mike Rahn, Manatee County Commissioner

• The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office uses Peregrine to easily action data for officers across the agency.
• The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission leverages Peregrine to integrate, enrich, and harmonize data that supports conservation efforts.
• The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office turns to Peregrine for record consolidation and simple, secure data sharing with neighboring agencies.
• For emergency managers in Manatee County, Peregrine enables safer, more accurate situational awareness from preparation and mitigation to response and recovery.

Announcing four new Peregrine customers in Florida

These new Peregrine customers collectively serve and protect more than 2.5 million Floridians: the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (PBSO), the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Division of Law Enforcement (FWC), the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (PSO), and the Manatee County Public Safety Department.

Every city, county, and state agency we work with faces unique challenges, even in the same region. Just ask any Floridian, and they’ll tell you how different West Palm Beach is from Wesley Chapel.

Public safety agencies across Florida know that just as their residents have different priorities and discrete needs, their communities grapple with different types of crimes and emergencies. So when it comes to data integration and management for Floridian law enforcement, one-size-fits-all software won’t work.

That’s why we built Peregrine to be inherently flexible. We can easily configure the platform to align with the operational context of each agency we serve, so officers can focus on achieving mission-critical outcomes. Here’s how Peregrine supports each of our new Floridian customers.

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office

According to April 2023 demographic data, Palm Beach County is the fourth largest Florida county by population count. In terms of square miles, Palm Beach County is the second largest in the state, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

With so much land and so many people to serve, PBSO uses lots of tech — which produces tons of data.

“We definitely have a lot of data,” said Major Paul Vrchota, “and we’ve been operating with information in silos. The reality is technology can work for you just as easily as it can work against you. We saw Peregrine as an opportunity to work smarter.”

Major Vrchota, who oversees the real-time crime center, outlined how he plans to leverage Peregrine across PBSO.

Patrol

Deputies in the field will use Peregrine as a single gateway to search multiple sources of data instead of having to log into various disparate databases. Deputies will be faster and better at responding to calls for service, especially when there’s a suspect in the area during an in-progress event.

Investigators

Depending on the case type, investigators sometimes spend a week’s worth of man-hours combing through databases and reading reports to find the data they need. Peregrine brings all this information into a common operating picture. The platform’s universal Search feature enables investigators to find what they need in seconds, and Peregrine’s technology links data across disparate sources together, surfacing the information investigators need but might not even know to look for.

Analysts

PBSO covers 20 districts across the county, so the agency must corral and compile data from all of its districts into salient reports for leadership — traditionally a tedious, time-consuming task. But with Peregrine, dashboards update in real time, pulling in data from multiple sources. Instead of manually collating information, analysts can automate that work in Peregrine and focus their time on more urgent tasks.

Real-time crime analysts and dispatchers

Like patrol officers, real-time crime analysts and dispatchers can use Peregrine to find and share accurate and timely information to deputies in the field more quickly, ensuring deputies are safe and prepared.

“Ultimately, real-time crime analysts and dispatchers will use Peregrine to quickly search across PBSO’s systems to find relevant information. It’s about maximizing efficiency,” Vrchota continued. “If we can use the platform to save us hours — operate more quickly, more comprehensively, more accurately — we see the potential for a huge return on our investment.”

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Division of Law Enforcement

The FWC Division of Law Enforcement has a unique conservation and public safety mission within Florida public safety. With more than 800 sworn officers, the division’s diverse responsibilities include investigating the illegal trafficking of fish and wildlife and enforcing laws to conserve Florida’s wildlife and habitats and regulate the state’s large seafood industry.

FWC’s Division of Law Enforcement works with Peregrine to integrate, enrich, and harmonize data from a number of FWC’s systems, including its recording management system, its computer-aided dispatch system (CAD), the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact, and multiple automated license plate recognition systems.

“The fact is, our officers are responsible for 8,000 miles of coastline, 13,000 square miles of offshore waters, and more than 34 million acres of land,” said Charles “Rett” Boyd, assistant executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “Access to data in the field is mission-critical. Peregrine surfaces data from multiple systems that don’t talk to each other with one search in a single pane of glass.”

Pasco County Sheriff’s Office

Public safety agencies such as Pasco County Sheriff’s Office face two fundamental challenges when sharing data with law enforcement partners: “dirty” data, which might be incomplete, duplicative, or redundant; and data-sharing security concerns, which can slow down interagency collaboration. Here’s how Peregrine will help PSO overcome those challenges.

Dirty data

When an investigator searches for a person and finds 40 duplicative records (think: 40 records for the same John Smith), it can be difficult to pinpoint the best record to reference and share with partners at other agencies.

Peregrine solves for this by merging redundant records into a single combined data asset — so now, there’s only one John Smith record. Tip: An orange indicator badge in Peregrine indicates a merged entity.

Data sharing security protocols

When an agency wants to collaborate or share information with its partners, it can do so either digitally or physically. Digital information sharing often requires a long, drawn-out process involving command staff and counsel. It also presents security concerns: If some personnel aren’t authorized to see certain information in a record, agencies face the onerous process of manually identifying who can see what and redacting information accordingly.

On the other hand, physical data sharing may entail driving to the partner’s HQ to collect files in person, which can be a big lift — sometimes literally.

Peregrine streamlines this process with intuitive access controls for fast and easy information sharing. Users access powerful access controls right in the Peregrine platform to ensure only those with the appropriate permissions can see and action data. Agencies using Peregrine can skip the tedious security process to share information with each other quickly and safely.

As part of our work with PSO, neighboring police departments will also have access to Peregrine. These agencies will be able to seamlessly share clean, accurate data with the confidence that their information is secure and civilians’ privacy and civil liberties are protected.

Peregrine’s curated alerting system notifies key personnel across departments when anyone searches for an entity such as a person, car, or place. This lets investigators and analysts in neighboring agencies know when they’re working on related cases so they can collaborate more effectively and optimize their resources.

Manatee County Public Safety Department

Four days after finalizing our agreement with the Manatee County Public Safety Department, Hurricane Debby was bearing down on Florida’s western coast. One of our deployment strategists traveled to Manatee County to help county agencies prepare for and respond to the storm as it unfolded.

Over the weekend before Debby made landfall, Peregrine worked with Manatee County to integrate weather forecasts, live precipitation radar, three types of water gauges, a WebEOC “Significant Events” feed, and county GIS layers including shelters, road closures, and parcels — along with other data sources — into Peregrine.

The outcome was a workspace displaying gauge alerts, WebEOC events, and statuses of overall weather conditions, shelter availability, and road closures — all of which updated in real time and improved situational awareness for Manatee County personnel. So when Debby landed in Florida on Aug. 5, Manatee County’s first responders were armed with a strong shared infrastructure for their most critical response data.

Peregrine can be deployed with speed and accuracy because of our dynamic data model and proprietary tooling. We treat data integration as a first-class problem, using smart, configurable heuristics to automatically link objects across multiple systems together, providing users with the context and information they need to make stronger decisions. Dive deeper into how Peregrine is deployed in 90 days or less here.

To enable effective hurricane response operations, Manatee County’s public safety and emergency management departments coordinated with more than 20 agencies across law enforcement, fire and rescue, transportation, human services, and animal services, providing up-to-date weather and impact information. In those emergency conditions, Peregrine enhanced Manatee’s collaborative response efforts with a seamless, secure solution for real-time data sharing among the county’s critical public agencies.

“After only a few days, we were able to see Peregrine’s value. They came onsite and quickly developed resources that were helpful during an emergency,” said Mike Rahn, Chair of the Manatee County Board of County Commissioners. “I can’t wait to see what we can do with Peregrine once we’re fully deployed, with data from our CAD and other systems integrated and enriched. But I do know Manatee County residents and first responders alike will be safer thanks to our partnership with Peregrine.”

Since Hurricane Debby, Manatee County has used Peregrine to drive situational awareness and faster, safer response efforts during hurricanes Helene and Milton. For emergency management agencies such as Manatee County Public Safety, Peregrine offers support across the entire emergency lifecycle, from preparation and mitigation to response and recovery.