Technology & Partnerships May Help Deter Crime in Peachtree Corners

Meeting among local government, law enforcement, business interests and residents showcased how enhanced safety systems work.

With a perception that crimes such as car break-ins, burglary, and street takeovers are on the rise in the area, residents of Peachtree Corners met with local law enforcement agencies for a periodic overview of what’s being done to combat crime. Hosted by the United Peachtree Corners Civic Association, homeowners, business owners, government officials and interested parties met at Christ the King Lutheran Church for the update.

Perhaps the most impactful weapon against crime, besides the officers themselves, is technology.

“One of our responsibilities with the resources that we have is to do what we can to support Gwinnett County police as they fulfill that obligation for providing a safe community. And one of the ways that we’ve found we can do it is using technology as a force multiplier,” said Peachtree Corners City Manager Brian Johnson. “You’ve heard us talk in the past about using cameras to help the police department with the ability to collect data or use it to investigate or prosecute crime.”

The use of high-end technology began with license plate reader cameras that are in certain intersections of the city, he said. Currently, there are 50 that take a snapshot of license plates coming through those intersections.

“They have been used on a number of occasions to solve crimes and apprehend a number of people that have committed crimes here,” said Johnson.

He pointed out that the creation of the Town Center and the increased activity there is going to attract problems.

“You get knuckleheads who like to destroy property or get into altercations with people and so we are also … installing 68 video cameras at the Town Center,” Johnson said.

Those video cameras are for use by Gwinnett County for surveillance to ensure it remains a safe environment. Just having the cameras there won’t do much good without the technology to assist law enforcement in identifying threats.

RTC3 integrates systems for better public safety

Johnson explained that many businesses have their own video security systems and would be overjoyed to link them up with the local police. “We happen to be privileged and lucky to have a company here that actually has solved the way to do that,” said Johnson. “We have a corporate tenant of the city, a company called Fusus that is very much in keeping with the technology.”

Fusus is known in law enforcement and public safety circles for its leading-edge RealTime Crime Center In The Cloud (RTC3) platform. A 2020 member of Atlanta Inno’s “50 on Fire,” Fusus has been recognized as among the hottest new companies in the Atlanta area.

The company moved its headquarters to a larger office space in Peachtree Corners in 2020 due to rapidly increasing demand for its platform. The Fusus RTC3 platform’s video intelligence and map-based awareness interface serves as the central integration point for law enforcement agencies’ surveillance, security and life safety technology.

Fusus brings all personnel and emergency operations centers under a unified umbrella that aggregates video and data, and directly integrates with 911 Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems, enabling agencies to geolocate officers and units in the field via the native fususOPS app, track calls for service and better coordinate their resources.

“I am a proud resident of Peachtree Corners and I intend to be for many more years,” said Chris Lindenau, CEO of Fusus. “One of the things I love about the city is that we are pulling a lot of innovation to it from around the Atlanta metropolitan area. And for those of us in the technology sector, this has always a been challenge.”

A graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, Lindenau resisted the pull of San Francisco and Silicon Valley to stay right here and be a part of “Silicon Orchard.” He started Fusus in June 2019.

“The reason we started this company is that we saw a real gap in law enforcement and the ability to pull in disparate technology sets to make use of what was there,” said Lindenau. “We all understand camera technology. We understand radios, right? Law enforcement uses radios. We understand that they have vehicles, and they need to know where their officers are at any given time in those vehicles. We understand that they have 911 dispatch systems.” He explained that the challenge in law enforcement is putting all those different systems together.

Business community and police collaborate more easily

Fusus found success in April 2020 by testing the system in Minneapolis. The real-world need was stepped up a month later with the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

“So the concept of just putting more law enforcement in the field was no longer viable,” said Lindenau. “We were born out of necessity to address an underlying issue that we knew was not just unique to Minneapolis, and that was that law enforcement needed new, novel ways to collaborate with the community. They could not go it alone. They needed their business community stakeholders to contribute back to that understanding of what was going on in the city.”

The intent of the program is to allow Gwinnett County Police to work more closely with the business community in sharing, among other things, video data. The collaboration will improve real-time response and enable law enforcement to have a clearer, quicker operational understanding of what’s going on in and around an issue. It will allow for things like graffiti on the bridge to not just be something that police respond to after the fact but perhaps deal with as it occurs. The program has already caught street racers in the midst of a “takeover” that resulted in multiple arrests.

The technology could also be a help in everyday issues like traffic jams. It doesn’t have to work only for situations under duress, said Lindenau.

“But ultimately, the goal is to allow the business community to get back into work in concert with their partners and law enforcement. One thing I want to emphasize is that this is a completely voluntary program, and the owners of these video sources have full control over the circumstances in which they’re shared. They can, through the flow switch, opt out of the program anytime,” Lindenau added.

“It’s very important to emphasize that we want to make sure that privacy is the bedrock foundation of everything we do, because I, as a fellow resident, don’t want to concede my privacy rights for public safety and security here in Peachtree Corners. That’s something I think we all share.”

The video streaming is set to begin in non-residential areas. Unlike video that’s shared on social media platforms like NextDoor, Facebook and Twitter, sharing with police is private. It won’t live forever on the internet. And its sole purpose is to resolve investigations more quickly.  

The technology is active in about 110 cities across the country. Now, the city where it was developed will be part of that number.

Video below from the C.O.P.S. meeting and a video from FUSUS