May 3, 2023, started like any other weekday at the Northside Hospital in Midtown Atlanta. The waiting room was filled with patients and their loved ones. Doctors and nurses bounced from room to room providing care to their community. Outside the building, a bustling business district was about to take its collective lunch break.

But the day turned tragic when a gunman opened fire in the facility, killing one individual, wounding four others and unleashing an urgent manhunt that kept the community on edge.

Responding in real time

Police dispatchers received the call at 12:08 p.m. A rush of officers, vehicles and specialty teams barreled toward Midtown. The area was put on lockdown as law enforcement officials began desperately searching for the suspect in the Atlanta metro area, where nearly 6.2 million people live. They knew the odds of quickly locating a lone suspect in a city that size were not favorable. But the city was crowded with something other than people: cameras.

“The camera system on May 3 was vital for us to quickly identify and locate and apprehend this individual that was causing harm to our city,” said Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum in an Instagram post on May 4, 2023.

In roughly 22 minutes, Atlanta Police Department’s Video Integration Center (its real-time crime center, or RTCC) powered by Fusus, alerted authorities to the suspect. Through integrated CCTV camera feeds, they learned he had stolen an unattended vehicle from a gas station. Police continued to track him with views from state-owned Georgia Department of Transportation cameras and fixed-camera Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology provided by Flock Safety. This led officers to a nearby condo complex, over 10 miles from where the original incident occurred, where Axon Body 3 body-worn cameras and Axon Fleet 3 in-car cameras with Axon Respond maintained visibility.

Fusus’ real-time technologies and seamless mutual aid capabilities — which help multiple agencies work together on the same platform — allowed officers from both Atlanta Police Department and Cobb County Police Department to close in and take the suspect into custody within just 8 hours of the first call being received.

Expanding the Axon ecosystem

The loss of life and the injuries of others during the tragedy in Atlanta have no place in our communities, where people should feel — and be— safe in public.

Real-time crime centers like Fusus offer an unprecedented opportunity to increase safety in any moment, in every environment. They provide a “single pane of glass” to monitor active incidents by integrating live video footage and other data points from various locations within a community. With Fusus, hospitals, schools, retail stores, houses of worship, event venues and residential communities — whole cities and towns — are better protected and, importantly, can contribute to greater safety for everyone.

That’s why Axon recently acquired Fusus and is so optimistic about the promise of more robust real-time intelligence. Together, Fusus and Axon usher in a new era of public safety that strengthens Axon’s ability to deliver on its mission to protect life, capture and preserve truth, and accelerate justice.

Axon's extensive network of public safety products already includes groundbreaking connected cameras like Axon Body 4 and Axon Fleet 3, life-saving de-escalation tools like TASER 10, real-time collaboration tools like Respond, and an open ecosystem of integrated partners. Adding Fusus to the Axon suite radically expands and deepens these real-time capabilities. It immediately gives public safety agencies the ability to access with permission CCTV camera feeds, including those maintained by the community, to see events unfolding with greater context and clarity.

These centers also have the ability to integrate and connect a wide range of sensors and data sources, including fixed, body-worn, fleet and ALPR cameras; gunshot detection sensors; social media feeds and more, to provide a comprehensive and immediate view of ongoing criminal activities or emergencies. Ultimately, by aggregating all of this information into a single pane of glass for public safety, real-time crime centers enhance situational awareness, improve response times and support proactive crime prevention efforts by leveraging up-to-the-minute information and analytics. This information can then be quickly and easily shared between collaborating agencies, ensuring accelerated justice for all involved.

Axon first delved into real-time solutions in 2019, when Axon Body 3 with Respond introduced livestreaming capabilities to give clearer insight into incidents as they unfolded. Since that time, other Axon devices and sensors, such as Fleet 3 in-car cameras and Axon Air drones, have incorporated livestreaming and live maps. And last year, Axon released Axon Body 4, with bi-directional voice communications enabled through the body-worn camera and a “Watch Me” feature that allows officers to request a second set of eyes on the scene for additional safety and support.

One officer from the St. Cloud Police Department in Minnesota used “Watch Me” to request support from a supervisor as he tried to locate a suspect in a basement, all without the need to remove one of his hands from his weapon, which he would have had to do if he were operating his radio. In other instances, investigators have taken witness statements via an officer’s body camera in order to proceed quickly with other aspects of the investigation.

Real-time crime centers further extend and enhance the use cases and impact of real-time technology and have become a necessity for law enforcement agencies to rapidly and effectively respond to critical incidents. They also bring operational efficiencies to agencies often strapped for resources. Today, Fusus is used by more than 250 cities and counties, including Miami, Cleveland and Minneapolis, to deliver the same level of unified situational awareness that the first responders in Atlanta experienced during the Northside Hospital shooting in Midtown Atlanta.

But RTCCs are not only useful for violent threats; they can also help resolve cases where people may be in danger in other ways. In one instance, Fusus helped officers locate a woman with Alzheimer’s who had wandered away from her home. The real-time crime center allowed officers to track her boarding a bus, and she was brought home unharmed. Separately, one agency used Fusus to recover more than $200,000 worth of stolen property, locate 17 vehicles and seize 30 firearms in a six-month timeframe.

Protecting more lives in more places

The sad truth is that more than 6 million people were victims of a crime in America in 2022 (Bureau of Justice Statistics). The United States also experiences an inordinate amount of mass shootings — more than 650 in 2023 alone (Gun Violence Archive). Separately, the Axon Public Safety Gun Fatality Database shows that in 2022, 1,201 people, including both officers and civilians, lost their lives in gun-related incidents between police and the public. In other areas of the globe, gang violence has surged in Latin America; drug trafficking has hit historic levels in Europe, increasing the threat of organized crime violence (Interpol Internationational); and human trafficking is prolific in South and Central Asia (Statista).

Public safety around the world demands new tools and innovation to keep people safe.

The good news is agencies are increasingly adopting technologies such as livestreaming, drones and real-time intelligence platforms, like Fusus, to help rapidly detect, respond to and resolve criminal activity in record time (think hours instead of weeks or even months) — ultimately helping to protect more lives in more places. This includes law enforcement officers and subjects involved in a given incident. With more immediate intelligence and support, response teams can make more informed decisions that limit the loss of human life, which is the basis for Axon’s moonshot goal to cut gun-related deaths between police and the public in half by 2033. Real-time crime centers will be central to that mission.

“If you rewind the hand of time four years, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today, right now,” said Chief Stuart VanHoozer of the Cobb County Police Department, which aided in the swift apprehension of the suspect in Atlanta. “Technology played a huge role, but technology does not do any good without people who are determined to capture an individual who would do something like this. And today we saw where those two things came together in an amazing way.”