High-profile venue 3D scanning to improve public safety in Texas (US)

In Texas (US), the Fort Worth Police Department has big plans to 3D scan every location where crowds gather. The digital twins of large venues will allow officers to develop effective pre-event plans to mitigate risks and save lives during mass casualty events.

In his 30-year career with the Fort Worth, Texas, Police Department, Sergeant Clayton E. Hays has worked in various fields: “I have done everything from crimes against children to using bait cars to catch commercial and opportunistic car thieves,” smiles Hays. His fellow officer, Police Officer Chris Bain, has spent 14 of his 18 years in law enforcement investigating crime scenes. Now, with nearly 50 years of combined law enforcement experience, the two have teamed up with Officer Kevin Caps to drive the application of laser scanning to Fort Worth’s pre-event planning process.

Better information in a race against time

The number of mass casualty incidents in the United States has been rising steadily for decades, leaving concerned public safety professionals searching for ways to respond more quickly and effectively. From the moment first responders hear the words “shots fired,” it is a race against time to save lives. Officers and medical personnel may be unfamiliar with the location’s layout when they arrive at an active shooter scene.

Sergeant Hays states: “If, for instance, we have an active shooter incident going on at a certain school, we want to be able to pull up lifelike three-dimensional views of inside the building so that command and control can divert officers or medical personnel to the right location.”

“In the past, we used 2D maps for orientation, but they do not make it easy to grasp the full reality of the situation. They lack critical spatial and structural information,” explains Officer Bain.

To address these concerns, the Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) has embarked on an ambitious program to use 3D laser scanning to create digital twins of all its schools, universities, event venues, and other high-density locations, such as Fort Worth’s downtown, the central train station, the Texas Motor Speedway, the United Methodist Church, and Texas Christian University. The 3D digital models created from these scans help first responders identify evacuation routes, define points of entry or pinpoint hazards.

Discovering the benefits of 3D scanning

“When we started working with 3D laser scanners in 2016, we were only scanning serious shootings and homicides or major cases like officer-involved shootings. In 2017, we discovered the Leica RTC360 at HxGN LIVE Global in Las Vegas, and it was a game changer for us. Instead of taking several hours to scan an entire scene, we can do each location in minutes.” The Fort Worth Police Department uses Leica’s Cyclone REGISTER 360 software to combine the cloud point scans and images.

“Overall, we now have a swift and easy process that, combined with the improved image clarity, has really increased buy-in from our detectives,” Hays said. As the department adopted the use of laser scanning for crime scene investigations, the vision of using the technology to save lives through ambitious pre-event planning began to take shape.

“We are interested in any place where large numbers of people gather,” says Hays. The Texas Motor Speedway, for example, has a maximum capacity of 160,000 spectators. Texas Christian University has 13,000 students. Over 65.000 people attend the First United Methodist Church services. These numbers underscore the importance of pre-event response plans. In Texas, between 2014 and 2022, there were 270 mass shooting events with 1.560 victims[1].

Mass shootings are typically defined as incidents in which four or more members of the public are shot. However, the worst single incident, the Las Vegas Strip shooting in 2017, resulted in 58 deaths and 546 injuries. The fifth worst mass shooting in the US was the First Baptist Church massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017, with 26 fatalities and 20 injured.

A historic community safety project

“Knowing that religious gatherings are also potential targets, we recently scanned the campus of First United Methodist Church in downtown Fort Worth. It is a historic house of worship with three floors of classrooms, preschool facilities, a sanctuary, a chapel area, and offices on a 3.5-acre campus. There were three of us working with two Leica RTC360s. So far, we have spent two days capturing 900 scans,” explains Sergeant Hays.

“The scans are the basis for developing pre-event response plans. For example, we want to be able to virtually enter the model and say: if something happens in the cafeteria here, we can move the children to keep them safe over here. We also want to know where to send officers to divert or deal with the suspect. Once we have a 3D (forensic) digital twin of a location, we can start planning these responses,” explains Officer Bain.

“Working with 2D plans is less intuitive. With the 3D digital twin, you can explore the digital model during planning or an active event. It allows officers who may never have seen the inside of that church or building to enter more confidently and quickly navigate to where they need to be.”  

A pioneering vision

However, it is not just this church building that is historic: According to Leica Public Safety and Forensics, the Fort Worth Police Department is the first police force to embark on such a comprehensive 3D scan-based pre-event planning project. FWPD envisions that in the near future, they will be able to integrate officers' GPS units or bodycams as well as webcams or other sensors inside buildings into the point cloud models to create a real-time 3D digital representation of the unfolding incident in an easy-to-use software solution. They are also interested in interfacing with the hardware installed already inside buildings to lock down specific areas to contain the perpetrator. Thanks to the movies and TV shows, this is a familiar vision, but Fort Worth wants to be one of the first to make it a reality, and Sergeant Clayton E. Hays considers it to be quite attainable. Officer Chris Bain nods in agreement while concluding:

***

“Ultimately, it is about improving the command and control of the police officers
and routing the medical personal to protect everyone involved.
Our goal is to reduce the number of casualties and save lives,
and we see 3D scanning as an important tool to help us fulfil that objective.”

***

[1] Source: Statista

3 good reasons to choose the Leica RT360 laser scanner

Featured experts: Sergeant Clayton Hays and Officer Chris Bain
Author: David M. Taylor, SoundsWrite.ch
Supervising Editor: Malgorzata Krol , Global Director MarCom Public Safety