NAMPA, Idaho — The Nampa Police Department created an Integrated Command Center, a cross-organizational, proactive approach to policing and traffic.
- The project cost $6.1 million, most of which came from Amazon Traffic Mitigation and ARPA funds.
- A network of cameras at nearly all Nampa intersections allows for real-time traffic light adjustments, incident response, and license plate scanning from a "hot list" databank.
- The system does not send tickets via mail because that is illegal in Idaho.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Nampa is among Treasure Valley cities growing quickly and police are trying to be more proactive.
I got an inside look at their Integrated Command Center which serves as a traffic monitoring center, real-time crime center, crime analysis unit, and emergency operations center.
Nampa police currently respond to more than 200 calls a day with more than half considered "reactionary."
"Reactionary calls are not officer initiated so we're basically showing up to some sort of event that we didn't create. We're responding, don't know what the circumstances are other than what we've been told, and those details aren't always accurate," explains Integrated Command Center supervisor Jason Craver.
This proactive approach extends to the city's traffic department.
"As of right now, we're reliant on reactive fixes. When a citizen sees a light doesn't turn for them right, they call us, we go out and fix it. That light could be not working for a month, for a day, it's all reactive when we hear from the public," said Matt Ricks, Nampa's Transportation Engineer Manager.
The city's Intelligent Transportation System will allow staff to remotely manage signal operations.
The network of cameras at nearly all Nampa intersections allows emergency response to be proactive as well.
By being able to see an accident in real time, the command center can call out first responders before anyone even has a chance to call 911.
Footage from the traffic cameras is stored for 14 days and a copy of any incident gets logged with the police report in the event that insurance wants a copy.
Deployed with the traffic camera network are license plate readers.
The system reads plate numbers, stores them for 60 days, and gets checked against a "hot list" managed by the state.
2.2 million scans were made in the week this data was pulled from, and of all those, only 9 were flagged by the system with an operator personally checking them.
This project got its start in 2018 with Nampa participating in the COMPASS regional transportation plan.
Costing around $6 million, $2.7 million came from the Amazon traffic mitigation plan, $2.6 million came from ARPA funds, and $800,000 from city funds.
