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The Overland Park Police Department will open a state-of-the-art real time crime center equipped with advanced surveillance technology designed to monitor and prevent criminal activity.
"We will continue to be focused on making sure our businesses, our residents, and our neighborhoods stay safe," Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog said.
The new facility is a partnership between the city and QuikTrip. The convenience store chain provided a $500,000 grant to pay for about half of the project.
"Our number one priority at QuikTrip is safety of our employees, safety of our customers, safety of our community and the reality is we know that that's a shared responsibility," said David Lawson, regional director of operations for QuikTrip.
The real time crime center will include traffic cameras and license plate readers to provide immediate information to officers as respond to a call or to be used in later criminal investigations.
The technology is designed to bridge communication gaps between dispatchers and police officers in the field.
"The officers don't have that capability as they're driving to the calls, dispatchers are on the phone," said Overland Park Police Department Major Richard Breshears. "So there's that gap between what the dispatchers can do and what the officers can do and that's really filling that void right now."
The center will feature audio-visual equipment with video wall for monitoring feeds. Team members will also have the ability to monitor and communicate through live streaming body cameras worn by patrol officers.
"We can launch drones from this location remotely; we can fly and kind of oversee until the officers can respond," said Breshears. "If a vehicle is fleeing a scene, we start looking at the traffic cameras instead of the officers going to the call where it's supposed to be. We can intercept that fleeing vehicle."
The center is slated to open in April 2026, ahead if the World Cup.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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