City of Tucson
Background
Framed by five mountain ranges and saguaro-studded desert, Tucson is Arizona’s second-largest city and the seat of Pima County—home to more than a million residents and over 7 million annual visitors. It’s a destination city with a busy civic calendar: El Tour de Tucson, La Fiesta de los Vaqueros (Tucson Rodeo), the Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase, All Souls Procession, the Tucson Festival of Books, the Tucson International Mariachi Conference, and the Cologuard Classic (PGA TOUR Champions).
It’s also a university town: the University of Arizona anchors a daily influx of 50,000+ students, staff, and visitors. For the Tucson Police Department (TPD), that mix means daily operations, large planned events, and critical incidents—often at city scale.
Launching CSARC
In October 2024, TPD launched the Community Safety Awareness and Response Center (CSARC) to deliver credible, real-time intelligence to officers, detectives, and community partners. Lieutenant Don Jorgenson, who leads the Crime Analytics Section within the Analysis Division, oversees CSARC and the Link Analysis and Strategic Operations (LASO) unit—data analysts who connect people, places, and cases.
“CSARC exists to get the best real-time information to the right people—fast.”
This initiative marked a new era of smart policing in Tucson: using technology and data to maximize resources, shorten investigations, and strengthen collaboration across agencies.
The Challenge
Standing up a Real-Time Crime Center meant unifying access to disparate legacy and new cameras across city departments, businesses, schools, and partner agencies—without overloading an aging hard-wired network.
CSARC also had to perform across three operational bands:
Low (daily ops): Analysts might need one or two cameras.
Medium (exigent incidents): Fast pull-ups across multiple feeds.
High (active killer/large-scale emergency): Dozens of cameras, all at once.
TPD needed one operating picture, rapid deployment, priority-based alerting, and a way to put live video into the hands of field supervisors—not just analysts in the center.
“We had to be able to rely on our technology. It has to deliver when we need it—whether it’s a daily call, a large planned event, or a critical incident.”
The Solution
TPD paired Verkada with the Axon Fūsus open platform to create a single unified operating picture. CP52-E PTZ, License Plate Recognition (LPR), and context cameras feed directly into FūsusONE; GC31 Cellular Gateways bring plug-and-play power and data to poles and intersections, avoiding trenching and minimizing strain on the legacy network.
Crucially, TPD decentralized workflow: CSARC trained officers, detectives, field sergeants, and commanders, then issued accounts so frontline leaders could open Fūsus on a laptop or phone and act immediately—while CSARC orchestrates.
Priority-based alerts align to TPD’s call levels (1–4) so life-safety events surface first.
Evidence.com integration lets analysts export Verkada clips to Axon with a few clicks.
A direct API integration between Verkada and Axon Fūsus—“forging new territory” at the start—now runs in maintenance mode, giving CSARC a reliable backbone for scale.
By decentralizing access and tying alerts to call priority, CSARC put smart policing principles into practice: the right information, to the right people, at the right time.
“Going with Fūsus and Verkada let us stay on mission. We integrated old and new cameras, prioritized alerts by call level, and put real-time video in the hands of people who need it most.”
Deployment Strategy
From the outset, CSARC developed a phased plan to expand coverage across Tucson. Three phases are already underway:
Downtown partnerships — Deploying PTZ and LPR cameras in collaboration with local business entities.
School safety initiative — Installing cameras on public egress routes within a quarter-mile of campuses, selected using LASO crime-pattern analysis.
Violence interruption initiative — Supporting a City Manager–led project with targeted deployments at community hotspots.
Future priorities include expanded coverage and broader regional interoperability with neighboring jurisdictions.
Real-World Impact
Faster Investigations
After a homicide, analysts located video of a vehicle matching the witness description traveling through a nearby intersection during the incident window. The footage also showed patrol units, lights and sirens activated, heading in the same direction about two minutes later. CSARC clipped that video, added the registered owner information, and shared it with detectives via Evidence.com for follow-up investigation.
“What once took days now takes minutes.”
Truth on Tape
During an aggravated assault near an apartment complex, a CP52-E PTZ in Sentry Mode auto-tracked the subject. Footage revealed the original caller had initiated the attack; officers received the clip immediately and made the right arrest.
Guidance for the Field
In exigent incidents, field sergeants open Fūsus on a laptop or work phone and pull Verkada feeds directly—guiding K-9, air, and perimeter units with live video context as CSARC coordinates broader response.
Auto Theft Task Force Alerts
Through the Verkada ↔ Fūsus API, watchlists and LPR hits notify teams the moment a plate of interest appears (“Camaro just seen at X, northbound”), accelerating interdictions without extra radio traffic.
Pre-Planned Events at City Scale
From El Tour de Tucson and the Rodeo Parade to the Gem Show, presidential visits, and large protests, CSARC uses Verkada to provide continuous, shared situational awareness when the stakes are highest.
Safer Schools, Shared View
LASO analyzed a quarter-mile radius around schools to identify campuses with higher violent-crime activity. Instead of placing cameras on school property, CSARC deployed Verkada cameras on public thoroughfares that serve as egress routes—the main paths suspects typically use to leave after an incident. To support collaboration, CSARC provisions Fūsus accounts for the school district’s security team, scoped only to those cameras. This way, both police and school staff see the same feeds in real time and coordinate from a common operating picture around campuses.
University of Arizona Collaboration
Because the UA campus sits in TPD’s jurisdiction, CSARC partnered with university security to exchange selective camera access. This helps ensure both agencies see the same feeds when incidents occur on or near campus.
Results
In under a year, CSARC has scaled quickly—demonstrating how smart policing pays off in measurable outcomes:
2,973 calls supported in the first eight months of operation.
Time-to-lead reduced from days to minutes with AI-powered search and LPR.
Higher reliability via cloud and cellular—no waiting on fiber, no legacy bottlenecks.
Direct API to Axon Fūsus simplified deployments and improved resilience—removing the need for additional CORE appliances—a critical advantage in Tucson’s extreme desert heat.
Verkada video flows directly into Evidence.com, streamlining casework and preserving chain of custody.
Expanded collaboration with the University of Arizona, school districts, and neighboring jurisdictions through selective shared access.
Why It Worked
CSARC’s success comes down to a few key design choices:
Overlapping tech where it matters: PTZ, LPR, and context cameras at intersections yield a complete narrative, not just stills.
Designed for the field: Decentralized access allows field leaders to act swiftly while CSARC manages the big picture.
Built for growth: Cloud and cellular deployments kept the expansion on track without trenching or bandwidth delays.
API innovation: A first-of-its-kind stream between Verkada and Fūsus now provides stable, maintenance-mode infrastructure.
Tools for collaboration: Through Fūsus, TPD provisions scoped accounts for the school district, grants selective camera access to the University of Arizona, and extends visibility to nearby jurisdictions—eliminating silos and improving safety for officers and the community.
Privacy & Governance
Strong governance practices help ensure CSARC’s tools are matched by safeguards for privacy and evidence integrity:
Role-based access: Feeds are shared selectively with permissions tied to duty roles and incidents.
Auditability and chain of custody: Every view, clip, and export is captured in Verkada’s audit logs to help create a defensible record for evidentiary use.
Encryption: Video is encrypted in transit and at rest.
Bias-aware workflows: Investigations of camera feeds focus on objective search descriptors (vehicle, clothing, time/location) rather than personal characteristics.
Evidence integration: Verkada clips flow directly into Axon Evidence.com, helping ensure detectives manage case video in the same trusted system used for body-worn and in-car footage. This reduces manual transfers and helps maintain a defensible chain of custody from capture to courtroom.
Looking Ahead
Lt. Jorgenson believes Tucson’s model shows how the right technology and partnerships can fuel collaboration and the next generation of RTCCs.
“We’re all on the same sheet of music. We’re not operating in silos anymore—by sharing access, we can partner together to keep all of our communities safer.”
He also stresses that smart policing is a collective effort: cities don’t need to reinvent the wheel. By learning from one another and adapting proven strategies to their own communities, agencies can amplify their impact and improve safety outcomes.
“We’re all doing more with less. The Fūsus–Verkada integration gives us real-time visibility, faster investigations, and a common operating picture—so we can keep our communities safer, together.”