On a wall inside Memphis Police Department headquarters, a bank of Planar video displays stretches roughly 20 feet across. The screens cycle through live feeds from traffic cameras, license plate readers, private business cameras, and ShotSpotter gunshot detection alerts. An analyst sitting at one of several workstations can pull up any intersection in the city within seconds. This is the Real Time Crime Center, and as of December 2023, it’s growing faster than most Memphians realize.
Action News 5 ran a feature on December 19 showing how the RTCC operates in practice. What the segment showed was impressive. What it didn’t fully explain is the technology stack underneath it all, and why the system’s expansion has major implications for every private security operation in Shelby County.
What the RTCC Actually Does
The Real Time Crime Center isn’t a single technology. It’s an integration layer that pulls data from multiple surveillance and detection systems into one dashboard. Think of it as a command hub where analysts can see the city in real time, connecting dots that individual data sources can’t connect on their own.
The core feeds include MPD’s own network of fixed surveillance cameras positioned at high-crime intersections and public spaces. License plate reader data comes in from both fixed installations and mobile units mounted on patrol vehicles. ShotSpotter, the acoustic gunshot detection system, covers several square miles of the city and alerts the RTCC within seconds of detecting gunfire, triangulating the location to within about 25 meters.
Then there’s the newest piece: private cameras.
Through the Connect 2 Memphis program, businesses and residents can link their existing security cameras directly to the RTCC. The Memphis Chamber of Commerce has been pushing this program hard through the fall, and the pitch is simple. You keep your cameras. You keep your footage. You keep your privacy settings. What you give MPD is the ability to tap into your feed when there’s an active incident in your area.
The technology making this possible comes from a company called Fusus, now operating under Axon’s umbrella after a 2023 acquisition. The FususCORE device is a small hardware unit that connects to a business’s existing camera system. It costs about $350 for the device plus $150 per year for the subscription. Once installed, the camera feeds become accessible to RTCC analysts through the Fusus platform, but only during active investigations or when the camera owner has granted standing access.
The Technology Stack
The RTCC runs on what’s essentially a federated data model. Each input source maintains its own data, its own storage, its own access controls. The Fusus platform sits on top as the aggregation layer, giving analysts a single interface to query across sources.
In practice, this means an RTCC analyst responding to a ShotSpotter alert at the intersection of Lamar and Shelby Drive can immediately pull up every camera within a configurable radius. That includes city-owned cameras, any private cameras enrolled in Connect 2 Memphis, and license plate reader data showing which vehicles passed through the area in the minutes before and after the detected gunfire.
The speed matters. Before the RTCC, a detective investigating a shooting would spend hours or days canvassing businesses for camera footage. Some business owners cooperated. Some didn’t. Some had cameras that were broken or recording over themselves every 48 hours. The footage, if it existed, arrived on a USB drive days after the incident.
Now, that same detective can have relevant camera feeds on screen within minutes of an incident. The RTCC can also push alerts to patrol units in the field, giving responding officers visual information before they arrive on scene.
License plate reader integration adds another dimension. The system maintains a hot list of plates associated with stolen vehicles, wanted persons, and vehicles connected to active investigations. When a reader hits a match, the alert goes to the RTCC, which can then track the vehicle’s movement across the city’s reader network in near real time. Given that Memphis has seen vehicle thefts skyrocket past 10,000 incidents in 2023, this capability is more than academic.
What Connect 2 Memphis Means for Private Security
Here’s where this gets interesting for the private security industry.
If you run a security operation for a commercial property, a retail strip, or a residential complex in Memphis, Connect 2 Memphis creates a two-way street that didn’t exist before. Your cameras become part of the city’s surveillance network during active incidents. In return, you get faster police response and access to a level of situational awareness that was previously only available to law enforcement.
The cost of entry is low. A mid-size business with an existing camera system is looking at $350 plus $150 annually to connect. For a property management company running six or eight locations across Shelby County, that’s under $4,000 a year total. Compare that to the cost of a single break-in at a commercial property, and the math is straightforward.
Several security companies operating in Memphis have started factoring Connect 2 Memphis into their client proposals. The pitch goes something like this: we’ll manage your on-site security personnel, and we’ll also get your cameras enrolled in the city’s network so you’re covered on both the private and public safety sides.
For security firms, there’s a competitive angle here too. A company that understands the RTCC system, knows how to get cameras enrolled, and can coordinate with MPD through the Fusus platform has something to offer that a guard-only provider doesn’t. It’s the difference between staffing and security management.
The Memphis Chamber has been holding information sessions for business owners in the Midtown, Downtown, and Medical District areas. The push has been strongest in commercial corridors along Poplar, Union, and Summer avenues, where business density makes the camera network most effective.
The Privacy Question Nobody Has Settled
Not everyone is cheering. Civil liberties advocates have raised pointed questions about the RTCC’s expansion, and those questions don’t have clean answers yet.
The core concern is scope creep. The Connect 2 Memphis program is voluntary right now. Businesses choose to enroll. Residential camera owners opt in. Access is supposed to be limited to active incident investigation. Those are reasonable boundaries.
The question is what happens in two years, or five. Does the system eventually become a condition of certain business permits? Does the “active incident” requirement quietly expand to include predictive policing applications? Once you’ve built the infrastructure to monitor every camera in a city, the temptation to use it for purposes beyond its original scope is significant.
Memphis City Council members have asked some of these questions in public meetings. The answers from MPD have been along the lines of “we take privacy seriously” and “access is strictly controlled.” Those assurances may be sincere. They’re also not policy. There’s no city ordinance specifically governing how RTCC data can be used, how long it’s retained, or what triggers an analyst’s access to a particular camera feed.
The ACLU of Tennessee has flagged concerns about disproportionate surveillance in historically Black neighborhoods, noting that ShotSpotter and camera density tend to be highest in areas like Frayser, Whitehaven, Orange Mound, and Hickory Hill. If the system treats those neighborhoods differently from Germantown or East Memphis, that’s a civil rights issue regardless of intent.
AI-powered analytics add another wrinkle. Some camera systems now include capabilities like facial recognition, behavioral analysis, and automatic license plate reading built into the camera itself rather than at the RTCC level. Local media coverage has mentioned AI-powered cameras in passing without specifying exactly which AI features are active in the Memphis system. That ambiguity isn’t reassuring to privacy advocates who’d prefer to know exactly what algorithms are running on feeds from their neighborhood.
What This Looks Like in Five Years
The trajectory is pretty clear. The RTCC is going to grow. More cameras will come online. The Fusus platform will integrate more data sources. The analytical capabilities will get smarter.
For private security companies operating in Memphis, this creates an operational reality that’s worth thinking about now rather than later. The line between private security and public safety is blurring. A security officer monitoring cameras at a Cordova shopping center is watching the same feeds that an RTCC analyst might pull up during an incident response. The information flows both ways.
Companies that position themselves as bridges between private security operations and the RTCC network will have an advantage. That means understanding the technology, knowing the enrollment process, and being able to explain to clients what it means when their cameras are part of a city-wide surveillance grid.
It also means being prepared to answer the privacy questions that clients are going to start asking. “Who can see my cameras?” is a simple question with a complicated answer right now. Security providers who can explain the access controls, data retention policies, and legal framework clearly will earn trust. Those who can’t, or who haven’t bothered to learn, will lose contracts to providers who have.
The RTCC represents the most significant shift in Memphis policing infrastructure in at least a decade. For the private security industry, it’s either an opportunity or a disruption. Probably both.
The cameras are going up. The network is expanding. The question for Memphis businesses isn’t whether to participate. It’s how much they understand about what they’re participating in.