Days before retiring as Miami's police chief, Manuel Orosa unveiled the city's ambitious plan to enhance homeland security by widening the lens of policing in Miami through the use of computers and high-powered cameras, the Miami Herald reports. It couldn't come at a more appropriate time: Technology was a key component in identifying the three men accused of terrorizing Paris and killing 17 people last week. Video surveillance cameras helped identify the remaining Tsarnaev brother, whose trial for the bombings of the 2013 Boston Marathon is about to begin.
Today, Miami's control center — or its Virtual Policing Detail — is a dark room with a U-shaped table filled with eight computers linked to 28 large-screen, 55-inch high-definition TVs hung on four walls. They are all connected to 25 cameras. The cameras look like giant eggs, white at one end, silver on the other. The plan is to expand the system into four other areas as well as some of the most crime-ridden public housing complexes. Think of hit television shows like 24, Homeland and NCIS, but on a smaller scale. “The future of policing is virtual policing,” Orosa said.