It is a major goal of the NFCA to connect all our nation’s fusion centers together under one data interoperability and ‘one-stop search’ network, such that an analyst at any center has instant access to data resources from across ALL centers at their fingertips, without requiring every center to forklift out / replace its existing data systems.
This ‘network of networks’ is novel to fusion centers, but consortiums of agencies across the nation are already recognizing that to achieve true data awareness, data sharing systems that were once designed for multi-agency sharing within one county / region / AOR must up the ante to include multi-network sharing across regions / AORs / etc. One such model, the multi-node sharing approach utilized by the PA State-wide Commonwealth Automated Police Exchange (CAPE), demonstrates how data being shared across disparate vendors / systems / domains and from both individual systems and different sharing networks can come together to form real-time, actionable intelligence, all without the cost-prohibitive need for agencies to change their existing data systems.
When applied to the NFCA’s goal, this proven ‘network of networks’ approach bridging technology and governance in a sustainable, rapidly deployable manner presents an opportunity for fusion centers to up their data-sharing game by adopting technology to facilitate cross-center sharing and collaboration across anywhere from two neighboring AORs to the entire nation.
Over the past two years, the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association (PCPA) has established and expanded a statewide police records sharing program known as the CAPE to bring real-time data awareness to local law enforcement agencies across the commonwealth. What makes this system special in this multi-sharing context is that CAPE is, at its essence, a multi-node sharing network as it connects 7 different regional sharing networks, 30 counties and100s of individual local police department RMS/CAD/PAWN systems to bring over 350 agencies across 39 counties together in a real-time, multi-agency information-sharing network, sharing information on incidents, offenders, persons of interest, vehicles, and more. CAPE has over 5,300 active law enforcement users across the Commonwealth and covers nearly 60% of the population.
Scott Bohn, Executive Director of the PCPA, has worked to grow this vital network to put information in the hands of officers when they need it most. “When an officer arrives at a scene, the ability to instantly access information about a suspect’s criminal history, prior encounters, or any weapons they may possess, from across as wide a network of jurisidictions and data sources can be critical and potentially life-saving information,” said Bohn. “CAPE provides officers with this kind of real-time awareness in a simple way.”
With its live, real-time links to myriad different systems, Bohn credits the domain/system agnostic nature of the underlying COBRAnet technology that powers CAPE as one of the core benefits of the solution.
“The COBRAnet technology that powers CAPE breaks down barriers between departments, systems, and information. We’re no longer working in silos. The core technology that powers CAPE ensures that every network and agency across the Commonwealth has the opportunity to participate in the sharing network,” said Bohn. Investigators and Analysts at intel centers use CAPE to collaborate, says Bohn, highlighting an ongoing, successful partnership between the ATF’s CGIC (Crime Gun Intelligence Center) and local law enforcement, using the CAPE Search App to cross-reference NIBIN data with CAPE to get illegal guns off the streets of the greater Philadelphia metro region.
COBRAnet Supports Reuse of Shared, Multi-Node Data
Despite a market full of software providers promoting their advanced analysis tools, agencies implementing these flashy tools often find themselves without the ability to ‘re-use’ the data once for other purposes, once it is ingested into the proprietary vendor ecosystem. This causes frustration, but more importantly can cause significant costs to extract data from these black boxes (if it can be extracted at all). COBRAnet technology removes these proprietary limitations (even allowing agencies to use data from such black boxes that the providers have confidently declared would be ‘impossible to extract and/or interact with’), giving agencies the flexibility to use any analytics tool they choose without being confined to a single vendor’s ecosystem, giving users the freedom to analyze and interpret that cross-system/network data using best-of-breed tools, without the need to perform costly data integration for every single tool they wish to use.
As evidence of this, the CAPE system already integrates various third-party tools, such as Crimewatch and SPIDR, to further enhance its value. “CAPE not only enables agencies to share data using COBRAnet’s own Search App, but also supports the reuse of that data across various operational tools. By connecting to systems like Crimewatch or fraud detection tools, CAPE helps agencies leverage their data investments more effectively,” explains Bohn. “CAPE is not just a data-sharing platform. It’s an ecosystem that provides integration potential with industry leading systems and resources that help agencies respond more effectively to crime, engage with the community, and prevent criminal activity. By leveraging these tools without needing to integrate data again and again per tool, agencies get even more value from the data they share and use.”
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CAPE - COBRAnet Technology Highlights to Consider:
- COBRAnet provides the multi-node framework for CAPE, brokering data across the network of networks from multiple systems covering 7 nodes, over 30 counties and 100s of individual agencies as well as various regional sharing networks.
- COBRAnet provides CAPE users with a one-stop search across 350 participating agencies, growing to over 375 by the end of 2025.
- COBRAnet is 100% domain and system agnostic. With 100s of different templates for leading information system vendors (across RMS, CMS, Intel, CAD, Corrections, ALPR and many others), using COBRAnet is accelerating CAPE’s mission immensely and is ready to be applied rapidly to the NFCA’s fusion center information sharing network goal, creating a massive network of intelligence and data awareness/accessibility.
- This model pioneered by CAPE is also ready to bring together not just the internal data resources of each fusion center, but all the state/county/local criminal justice and law enforcement partners RMS, CAD, JMS, CMS and other data sources within their respective AORs. This approach is currently in place for the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC).
- COBRAnet is agile, scalable, and processes queries in real-time. Based on current user/searching trends, there will be an estimated 1 million queries conducted of the CAPE network in 2025!
- Over 100,000,000 records are available in CAPE alone and this number grows every day as new agencies/regional sharing networks are connected.
