Technology and Talent Boost Crime Solvability in Hartford
What does better criminal case solvability mean to a community? It means faster investigations, higher apprehensions, reductions in drivers of crime, and greater trust from citizens. In Hartford, Connecticut, technology, data-driven processes, and specialized analysts came together in its police department’s Capital City Command Center (C4) real-time crime center (RTCC) to deliver improved solvability.
The Hartford Police Department founded the C4 in Hartford in 2015, and the center pulls disparate technology from across the city into a centralized investigative and response function. Now, when police officers are responding to a report of a shooting, analysts are already pulling up surveillance footage, license plate readers, analytics, and other tools to help officers in real-time.
“One thing that we learned about putting out technology years ago is that police can’t use technology while they’re driving to a crime,” says Sgt. Chris Mastroianni, supervisor of the C4 RTCC and the intelligence division in the Hartford Police Department. “You’re in a cruiser, you’re going lights and sirens, you’re watching your computer, you’re watching traffic, you’re making sure you’re not crashing… The last thing you can do is start using cameras and license plate readers while going to the scene. So, our goal here in the center is we’re going to do that for them and just give them what they need in real-time and eliminate all the rest of that white noise.”
Now, with technology and analysts in place, virtual responders often beat police to the scene, enabling faster evidence-gathering and a more intelligence-led response. This advance work can lead to greater solvability, Mastroianni says.
Nonfatal shooting cases are notoriously difficult for law enforcement investigators to solve, especially when witnesses and victims are uncooperative.
“Given that a relative minority of shooters in most cities are apprehended for their crimes, it can be difficult to overcome the legal cynicism and fear of retaliation that prevents many victims and witnesses from aiding investigations,” wrote Mastroianni and Dr. Lisa Barao, who is now associate director of research at the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, in a Police Quarterly study. “Not only do unsolved shooting cases fail to provide justice for victims and their loved ones, but they contribute to ongoing cycles of violence by undermining police efforts to deter gun violence and contributing to the willingness of individuals to seek retribution.”
Technology alone, including surveillance cameras, doesn’t serve as an effective crime deterrent without action and process for its usage, Mastroianni says.
“Why would crime go down just because you put a plastic camera on a pole?” he asks. “If you put a fire hydrant on the street, it doesn’t prevent fires and it doesn’t make fires go out faster. You need a process for how that technology is used.”
The C4 RTCC connects approximately 1,400 surveillance cameras across Hartford, integrated with automatic license plate reader (ALPR) technology, gunshot detection, and more. Milestone Systems’ XProtect video management software (VMS) ties the disparate systems together through an open architecture that doesn’t handcuff the department to any one technology provider as it scales up and allows for custom integrations, Mastroianni says. In addition, a custom Slack implementation enables analysts to push data and information in real-time, including video, images, and intelligence straight to officers’ mobile devices.
For example, in the event of a robbery at a gas station by someone driving a blue Honda hatchback, RTCC analysts will virtually respond to the scene as police drive to the location. Analysts will capture images of the blue Honda speeding away and push those images to responding officers. If the Honda is caught by a license plate reader, analysts will start to run the plate number and get the owner’s information and address. These efforts help create solvability.
“I was on a gun taskforce years ago,” Mastroianni says. “We used to pick up shell casings and go to the next call. But now, when you insert video and cameras out there, it’s oftentimes launching investigations. We’re getting cars, plates, people, clothing, descriptions—the foundation of all this is having deployed video cameras.”
“What Hartford has accomplished with their C4 center shows the real impact of breaking down technology silos,” said Mark Johnson, Business Development Manager, Milestone Systems, in a statement emailed to Security Management. “Their analysts aren’t wasting time switching between disconnected systems or waiting for data to transfer. Everything works together: cameras, analytics, and intelligence, so they can act on information immediately. This is how you transform investigations in today’s connected security ecosystems.”
Not only do unsolved shooting cases fail to provide justice for victims and their loved ones, but they contribute to ongoing cycles of violence.
Even though the technology is valuable, lots of RTCCs and police departments forget about the human element. Well-trained end users are the most important piece in leveraging technology for incident response, Mastroianni says.
Some police departments use their RTCCs as a place to send injured police officers on desk duty, he says, cycling them in and out based on their recovery status. But this short-term assignment cannot compete with a specialized, trained analyst’s ability to leverage the technology and assist officers in the field.
“The end users are oftentimes forgotten in this whole process,” he adds. “I see a lot of police departments and agencies just blow money on technology, and they don’t really identify who’s going to use it. They forget about the human element. It’s important to invest just as much in your humans as in your technology.”
Mastroianni recommends that departments leverage more civilian real-time analysts who can bring specialization to RTCCs, even though that change can require a culture shift from some police departments that balk at bringing in non-officers.
Beyond recruiting the right people, the C4 function also invests in their training, especially since the center provides real-time crime assistance, investigative support, and digital forensics for the Hartford Police Department. Some analysts need to specialize in cell phone forensics or other programs, but all of them need training in video surveillance basics and analytics. This enables them to both perform their jobs and be ready to adequately articulate their responsibilities and how surveillance works to a jury if needed.
The analysts, police officers, and Mastroianni are also primed to articulate the RTCC’s work to other stakeholders across the city and community, which has paid off in surprising ways.
Mastroianni gives RTCC tours to churches, community groups, Boy Scout troops, and news crews—the room is not hidden, and he says that the benefit of promoting C4’s work outweighs the risk.
“We had one community last year that counted the cameras in a neighbor community and was jealous that they had more cameras,” he says. “That’s a huge win for us. If that’s the worst problem we have—people want more cameras and more technology out there—we go from a point where the community didn’t trust police with any technology to wanting more. I think we’ve built that here with transparency, showing our work, showing our successes, and addressing other things in the community.”
This openness has helped Mastroianni identify win-win opportunities with other departments. A single leaf from an overgrown tree could block the camera view for a whole street, so the RTCC needs regular help from the City Arborist. As a sign of gratitude and partnership, Mastroianni factored in some funding for tree-trimming costs into his grant proposals for C4. C4 analysts also helped investigate a serial tree-cutter incident in the city, where the culprit would cut down trees, collect the fee from the homeowner, but never cut up the tree or haul the wood away—leaving it for city employees to handle.
Similarly, C4 analysts regularly help Public Works employees with illegal dumping investigations, including when someone was purchasing disused boats and then dumping the boats on city streets to cash in on the scrap metal from the trailers. In a 12-month period in 2024 and 2025, the C4 team has helped open 33 arrest warrants for illegal dumping through a dual initiative with Public Works.
“It doesn’t have to be just police technology,” Mastroianni says. “We offer to help other entities to get the entire city to buy in that this is a city initiative, not just a police department surveillance center.”
In addition to sharing resources, just sharing C4’s story and impact has significant benefits. By giving tours and explaining what critical work C4 does on a daily basis, Mastroianni has won the loyalty of power company executives, IT department leaders, and his maintenance vendor.
“We have a maintenance vendor here who is bought into the mission and takes it as seriously as we do when I schedule maintenance with them,” he says. “…We share all of our successes with them. If we have an incident where we solved it right away and it led to an arrest, I will send that to them. So, I’m constantly creating that buy-in with our vendor.”
But many partners and stakeholders want more solid, long-term data to encourage them to buy in. This brings the story back to solvability.
Mastroianni partnered with Barao at the University of Pennsylvania to comb through C4’s data on criminal gun homicides and nonfatal injury shootings. They also reviewed the C4 activity tracker, which contains a log of all activities—technologies and programs used, associated case information, and descriptions of analyst actions—related to criminal investigations. Then, they conducted a quantitative analysis of case outcomes. Of the 243 investigations included, C4 provided investigative support for 86 percent of them. Relevant video was located in about 51 percent of cases, and gunshot detection alerts were generated for around 55 percent of cases (primarily outdoor cases, since gunshot detection alerts are not generated for indoor or many in-vehicle shootings).
The research found that gun homicide and nonfatal shooting assaults with associated video evidence—either of the incident itself or of other helpful context—were 442 percent more likely to be solved than such cases without video evidence.
This data—both from the peer-reviewed study and the ongoing log that underpinned it—enabled Mastroianni to successfully argue for more C4 shifts and more personnel, even when the administration in charge of the city changes or budgets tighten.
“A lot of times, people come in this crime center and they go, ‘Geez, this is overwhelming. You have 14 people, you have all this stuff,’” he says. “They don’t realize that we started in a Tahoe with one intern analyst, and we grew. It does take time to piece this all together, but good data is how we continue to grow.”
Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected].
