How do police departments solve crimes that cross jurisdictional boundaries?

To solve cross-jurisdictional crimes, local law enforcement agencies work with relevant local, municipal, state, and federal partners to share intelligence, investigate leads, and coordinate strategic actions. Data integration makes interagency collaboration easier, giving investigators a shared operational picture and a way to share data securely in real time.

How does data integration help police link evidence across agencies?

Data integration connects information across agencies' previously siloed data sources, allowing investigators to uncover links between incidents, cases, and individuals. Unified data platforms automatically surface these connections and provide automated analysis that highlights key information. CJIS-compliant data integration solutions create a secure, unified data environment for collaborating agencies.

How do police agencies securely share data during investigations?

Police agencies securely share data during investigations using CJIS-compliant data integration platforms designed for law enforcement collaboration. These systems allow agencies to share intelligence with partner organizations using role-based permissions, ensuring only authorized users can access sensitive information. Secure platforms also provide audit logs, end-to-end encryption, and location-based privacy controls to protect data and maintain accountability.

How can unified crime data improve investigative efficiency?

Data integration allows investigators to easily access, analyze, and make connections across cross-jurisdictional data sources. Unified data platforms apply intelligent analysis to highlight previously unseen connections, helping investigators identify leads, suspects, and data-informed actions.

How the Richmond Police Department reduced cross-jurisdictional violent crime through interagency data sharing

Peregrine Staff

April 4, 2023

KEY IDEAS:
Richmond Police Department needed a secure, efficient way to collaborate with partner agencies to investigate cross-jurisdictional crime.
Data silos make interagency collaboration difficult by preventing investigators from forming a shared operational picture.
Data integration connects previously siloed systems across agencies, creating a common data environment that improves communication and coordination.
With a unified data platform, Richmond Police Department accessed and analyzed cross-jurisdictional intelligence to identify and apprehend an individual involved in multiple shootings.

💡 RICHMOND POLICE DEPARTMENT (RPD) AT A GLANCE:
Location: Richmond, California
Established: 1909
Population: Approx. 115,353
Sworn count: Approx. 123
Sources: RPD, U.S. Census

RICHMOND, Calif. — Interagency collaboration is an essential component of effective policing. When crime crosses jurisdictional borders, neighboring agencies must coordinate to share intelligence, investigate leads, and take appropriate action. For Richmond Police Department in California, that coordination often extends to municipal, state, and federal partners.

However, many police agencies are still working to break down internal data silos, which makes external collaboration even more difficult. When critical information is stored across disconnected systems, investigators struggle to form connections between incidents and coordinate with partner agencies.

To overcome these challenges, Richmond Police Department implemented Peregrine as a unified data integration platform, enabling investigators to securely share intelligence and surface connections across jurisdictions. With integrated data, Richmond PD coordinated with partner agencies to identify and apprehend an individual involved in multiple shootings.

Keep reading to learn how data integration strengthens interagency collaboration and helps police agencies solve cross-jurisdictional crime.

The problem: Critical crime data stored across siloed police systems

Crime isn’t bound by jurisdiction, but agencies’ data often is. Key information may be stored in disconnected solutions, locked in an agency’s internal solutions or their partner agencies’ external data sources. That hinders interagency collaboration and makes it difficult to form connections between cases in separate jurisdictions.

READ MORE → Interagency Data Sharing: Overcoming Barriers To Drive Collaboration

For Richmond PD, that hindered the agency’s ability to solve and prevent cross-jurisdictional crime. To link one shooting to a case report outside the agency’s jurisdiction, personnel would have to do time-consuming legwork.

Traditionally, it would have been a challenging and cumbersome process:

Officers would have gone door-to-door in the area, looking to find a witness willing to identify the suspect.
They could also manually look up the ballistics report, search related cases, and hope to secure pertinent case files.

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY: Data silos slow down cross-jurisdictional investigations. Critical incident-related information is often stored in multiple systems, such as:
Internal data sources, such as RMS and CAD systems
Partner agencies’ RMS and CAD systems
Jail management systems
Warrant databases
State or federal databases
Without an easy way to search across all of these siloed data sources, personnel must manually gather and analyze crime data. They might miss key connections, leads, or insights gathered by neighboring agencies.

The solution: Integrating data across jurisdictions to streamline investigations

Richmond PD implemented Peregrine to seamlessly connect information from multiple federal and municipal organizations in one unified search. Peregrine automatically links information between these previously siloed data sources, surfacing pertinent intelligence based on an initial incident. With unified data, personnel can quickly identify connections across jurisdictions.

🔎 HOW DO DATA INTEGRATION PLATFORMS ENABLE SECURE INTERAGENCY COLLABORATION?
Data integration solutions create secure data sharing environments that support real-time communication between agencies. CJIS-compliant platforms use fine-grained user permissions and audit trails. Platforms like Peregrine integrate data using agency-specific privacy controls — down to the role of the specific individual — to ensure all information is only shared with authorized users.

How Richmond PD used unified data to solve cross-jurisdictional crime

Peregrine helped Richmond PD officers identify an individual who had been involved in multiple shootings by automatically linking information from one federal and two municipal agencies:

Peregrine linked the Richmond PD case to a shooting case under another police department’s jurisdiction. Ballistics data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) showed that the shell casings matched in both cases.
Peregrine linked that information to data from other integrated systems. Normally, these reports are emailed as PDFs. Peregrine can automatically process these files.

CASE STUDY → Pinellas County: Catching a Hit-and-Run Suspect With Real-Time Data Sharing

Richmond PD officers then leveraged cross-jurisdictional data to follow leads from witnesses:

A witness gave Richmond PD a description of a vehicle and potential address of a suspect. Detectives were able to leverage Peregrine’s platform to easily pull other case reports near the address.
From those cases, another witness in a separate case report mentioned the name of a suspect who had fired a gun at a location that matched the location in the case from the second police department identified in the NIBIN report.
The Richmond detective read the other agency’s case report in Peregrine, and determined that the suspect was likely at both of the shooting locations.
The detective searched in Peregrine to find that this suspect had a family member who owned a vehicle that matched a vehicle description from the first witness in the Richmond case.

After securing a warrant, the Richmond PD determined the individual in question was involved in the shooting and illegally possessed firearms.

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Data integration helped Richmond Police Department solve a cross-jurisdictional investigation by connecting evidence across agencies.
With a shared data integration solution, Richmond PD investigators linked evidence from multiple agencies, identified a suspect involved in multiple shootings, and obtained a warrant.
Peregrine highlighted key information from municipal and federal agencies, including case reports, witness information, and ballistics data.

Why data integration is essential for cross-jurisdictional crime investigations

Effective data integration solutions help law enforcement agencies do more with less — efficiently and quickly solving crimes amidst staffing shortages. Data silos slow down investigations by forcing investigators to manually track down pertinent information stored in other agencies’ databases. Secure data integration platforms enable agencies to share and access relevant insights in real time, streamlining investigations and enhancing interagency collaboration.

Using Peregrine, a CJIS-compliant data integration solution, Richmond PD personnel can now:

Collaborate with other federal and state agencies to solve crime using one platform
Automatically surface connections between seemingly disconnected data across all agencies’ systems of record
Access and analyze data from multiple agencies without sacrificing security

Talk to us today about protecting your community with Peregrine.

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