The Broward Sheriff’s Office has received nearly $1.5 million in federal funding to expand its Real Time Crime Center, which was created after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, and its Digital Forensics Unit to help with investigations of human trafficking.
U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowitz, who submitted the funding requests, held a news conference with Sheriff Gregory Tony to announce the grants on Thursday.
The $525,000 for the Digital Forensics Unit will be used to pay for hardware, work stations, computer software to “boost evidence tracking and collaboration with prosecutors” with a focus on investigating child sex crimes and human trafficking, said Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston.
“Unfortunately, as the sheriff has talked about so many times, human trafficking is a really terrible scourge right here in South Florida,” Wasserman Schultz said. “We really are a hotbed because of how many tourists we have and how many major events we have, which are often a magnet for those who want to seek out that kind of activity.”
The $963,000 for the Real Time Crime Center will be used similarly for technology and more personnel to help “mitigate the workload,” Tony said.
The Real Time Crime Center was created in the wake of the Parkland mass shooting where 17 people were murdered and 17 others injured, “designed to mitigate another tragedy,” said Moskowitz, D-Parkland.
The Real Time Crime Center works closely with dispatch, and people can connect security cameras at their businesses or homes with the center to share footage directly, which are accessed based on where crimes are reported. It allows detectives to see a potential active scene before deputies and first responders arrive, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Moskowitz, who graduated from Stoneman Douglas, has been a vocal supporter of gun violence prevention since the Parkland mass shooting and since the mass school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, where 21 students and teachers were murdered.
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Broward Sheriff Receives $1.5M to Expand Real Time Crime Center
Approximately $963,000 will be used to purchase technology for the center, and $525,000 will be used by the county’s Digital Forensics Unit to pay for hardware, work stations and computer software.
(Skrypnykov Dmytro/Shutterstock)
