A state-of-the-art surveillance system is coming together in western Massachusetts. It’s overseers in Chicopee hope to offer it as a regional tool to be used by law enforcement across the Pioneer Valley. As WAMC reports, police say the technology is about public safety, not spying on residents.
Since at least 2024, the Chicopee Police Department has been building up a special team. The goal: use new technology to get officers the most information possible as they respond to a call, all while tapping into assets already in the city.
The result: the “Real Time Information Center,” or RTIC, helmed by Director Bill Schwarz.
“This is the most people we've had in this room. I'm a true believer that the more people you put in one place, the more likely our system is to fail, but here we go,” he joked to a small room filled with at least two dozen officers, reporters and others.
While it has been active for the past year, members of the media and other officials were invited to tour the space Wednesday: a windowless room at the Chicopee Public Safety Complex, covered wall-to-wall with massive monitors, showing dozens of video feeds and maps.
Inside was a small team of analysts manning computers, phones and radios – all while accessing an AI-integrated system that taps into city-owned live feeds, from street cameras to cruiser dashcams to police body cameras.
“Every officer in Chicopee wears a body-worn [camera] - there's a couple of times we can launch it… officers, at any time, can push the button that says ‘Watch Me,’” Schwarz explained, activating a body camera in the room, complete with a notification siren going off. “Imagine being on a car stop by yourself and you get that hinky feeling … or you're on a building search and you're by yourself and you want another set of eyes on it…”
“We get alerts in here… we can launch the body-worn camera and… there it is, live,” he said as the feed went up on a screen. “It's an angel-on-your-shoulder. That’s how we sell it."
RTIC utilizes artificial intelligence, suite of software allowing for quick tracking
While such access is becoming more common across the country, combining it with artificial intelligence is a new frontier, says Acting Police Chief Eric Watson.
Demonstrating for the media, one of the team’s analysts brought up their “Dynamic AI” search tool – a sort of Google Images-like interface where users can specify objects they’re looking for, such as a car or pedestrian that may have gone by a city camera.
They can specify anything from a vehicle’s color to whether a person is wearing a backpack or possibly even their gender. The tool, powered by software called “fususONE,” then taps into a month’s worth of archived video footage, showing whatever was queried, whether it’s a red car or male in a blue shirt.
Authorities say it’s a tool ideal for “Be on the look out” or BOLO calls. Using a description, analysts can potentially track down anything from a wanted suspect to a missing senior citizen.
In the eyes of Mayor John Vieau, it’s the next best thing for boosting public safety in the city of 55,000.
“There's a lot of pride in the room - we're excited about keeping this community safe and embracing AI, embracing technology, and partnering with our neighbors and partnering with the Sheriff's Department,” Vieau said, referencing how Watson initially approached his office while still deputy chief, looking to integrate technology at Chicopee PD.
“These partnerships are going to continue to grow, and we're going to collaborate and we're going to make this region a lot safer,” the mayor added.
Center built with future PD collaborations, regionalization in mind
The venture has featured various costs over the past two years, from the $90,000 salary for one analyst to the $147,000 the city reportedly pays for fususONE alone. Grant funding is also covering some of the costs, as well, according to The Reminder newspaper.
Chicopee also spent close to $1.5 million in 2025 on one of the vendors involved, Axon, according to city records. However, much of that isn’t RTIC-related per se: the company also supports the department’s body cameras, tasers and a host of other equipment and software. Plus, Axon owns fusus.
There are also partnerships: the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office has been a collaborator in the venture, providing three additional analysts.
“What I like about this program the most - it's using AI in a very positive way,” Sheriff Nick Cocchi told WAMC. “What I believe it does is it gives so much information to the officer going into the scene that we're going to get better outcomes … when you approach somebody with compassion, with professionalism and respect... that outcome is going to be safer for everybody involved, and that's really our goal here: to rebuild the trust in law enforcement.”
Branching out and working with other police departments is also on the table, according to Chief Watson, who noted officials with at least one unnamed municipality would be touring the facility later in the week, and that there have been other conversations with towns and cities like Springfield.
“[Schwarz] worked in Springfield for ten years - he had no idea about the technology that we had here, I didn’t know what he had there - we’ve been bad at communicating over the years: police departments are just not good at it,” Watson said. “That’s what we’re trying to break down. Once we realized what we each had, [we] kind of came up with the idea that we need to regionalize and we need to partner together.”
RTIC is already able to see ShotSpotter activations in Holyoke and Springfield. Alerts from a Monday shooting in Springfield’s Indian Orchard neighborhood that left two teens wounded were still on the map during Wednesday’s tour.
More than just a couple cameras
It’s the kind of surveillance that’s brought up concerns throughout the Pioneer Valley in the past. For example, in Easthampton last year, the installation of a license plate-reading camera was halted after public outcry. Meanwhile, in Springfield, police continued access of school cameras in Springfield proved to be controversial as police and the school department reached a memorandum of understanding on the matter.
Schwarz says Chicopee has been working to integrate school cameras in a similar manner, using Springfield’s MoU as “framework.”
Investigative news outlet The Shoestring has previously reported that, according to Watson, the police department also does not use any form of facial recognition.
The 2025 report by Jonathan Gerhardson also claimed over 500 cameras are technically part of the network. Not all of them are city-owned, either. Businesses and residents are invited to reach out and integrate their own cameras with RTIC, as well.
When asked about privacy concerns, officials say virtually everything searched using the software is recorded, with audits conducted and access being limited to mainly RTIC’s trained analysts.
“We have policies in place that protect,” Watson told WAMC. “Our procedures and how we do things … everything that we do is logged, every click that's made in any of our software pretty much is logged and available to audit.”
“Everything we do, we do in public places,” the acting chief said of the cameras RTIC accesses. “No one should have any expectation of privacy that you wouldn't otherwise have [on the street]. You can walk down the street and see something - we can just see it through the camera. It's really no difference.”
