The Westchester Intelligence Center is a reflection of the evolution of policing in Westchester County and proactively addresses criminal activity through intelligence-led policing
Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore, along with representatives from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, announce the opening of the Westchester Intelligence Center.
The Center, the cost of which includes infrastructure and software, was partially funded by asset forfeiture and Federal law enforcement grant money. It is located in downtown White Plains, adjacent to the County Office Building.
The mission of the Westchester Intelligence Center is to support the criminal investigative process for all of Westchester's law enforcement agencies, through collection, analysis and dissemination of law enforcement intelligence.
Working collaboratively with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the federally funded HIDTA - High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area – program, the goal of the Intelligence Center is to provide strategic solutions to prevent and solve crimes, through intelligence-led policing.
Intelligence-led policing is a strategic targeted approach to crime control that focuses on identification, analysis and response to persisting and developing trends.
The Center will assist each of Westchester's forty-three police departments in their work investigating and preventing crimes committed in Westchester County. Each department brings individual strengths to the community it serves, however criminal activity extends beyond individual localities and political boundaries, impacting neighboring communities.
The Center connects electronically the District Attorney's office, local, state and federal police agencies, thereby creating a crime analysis intelligence center. The resulting connectivity permits the departments to both control and manage their own data and still share with other agencies the critical information that will help every department address its crime problems, impacting and enhancing public safety countywide.
By analyzing data received, the Intelligence Center will develop in-depth crime analysis, permitting the District Attorney and police senior management each month to understand Westchester's crime trends and to develop strategies to combat them.
This includes:
- Identifying offenders who commit crimes across numerous jurisdictions,
- Identifying ballistics links, crime scene evidence and targets of investigations in understanding which individuals and groups are driving gun violence in the County,
Effective law enforcement demands a collaborative approach in dealing with cross boundary crimes of a similar nature. Investigative police work in the twenty-first century can no longer stop at a border.
The Westchester Intelligence Center is designed to allow networking of information and strategies insuring that crucial investigative information reach each partner – consolidating efforts and investigative techniques which may be working at cross purposes.
When fully staffed, twenty analysts/investigators, working collaboratively with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, will have access to millions of records that are within reach of investigators within minutes, instead of days or weeks.
These include:
- Over 5 million New York State criminal records, parole and probation files
- Over 5 million photo records
- Over 31 million national crime records
- Billions of public records
The Center also employs satellite imaging and sophisticated mapping of the county.
The Center, which began phasing in operations in February, is available to support police departments throughout Westchester on a 24- hour-a-day basis.
