Already under way is the addition of more data sources and real-time alerts to the IBM-built data warehouse used by the RTCC and the rest of the 37,000-officer force. The data warehouse will also accelerate the NYPD's famed CompStat crime-mapping tool, though it won't replace it.

"We're in a war, so we need to give our guys in the front lines the best tools possible," said CIO James Onalfo. The NYPD has spent about US$300 million in the past three years on new technology tools.

One of those tools was the RTCC, which was built by systems integrator Dimension Data Holdings PLC and launched in June 2005. The RTCC is essentially a centralized help desk tasked with providing quick data to the department's 8,000 detectives, who used the tool and solved 74% of all homicides last year.

Though the RTCC has garnered more publicity, the IBM-built data warehouse underpinning it is more fundamental to the entire NYPD.

In the first phase, completed in the middle of 2005, several years of historical data, including complaints, arrests, stops, "question and frisks," criminal summons, shootings and homicides, was imported into an IBM DB2 8 database running on a pair of IBM P650 eight-way AIX servers, according to Christine Tyler, an associate partner in the public-sector practice at IBM's Global Business Services division. The second phase, which just finished, brought in complaint records going back to 1995 and arrest data going back to 1990, Tyler said. That now includes free text notes in the arrest records.