ForceMetrics Case Study: Brookhaven Police Department

"It just makes my day better, I don’t know how else to put it." Victoria Williams, Mental Health Clinician

How Brookhaven PD Uses ForceMetrics to Identify Crime Trends, Support Mental Health Responses, and Strengthen Investigations.

Overview

Brookhaven, Georgia, like many municipalities, sees frequent encounters between law enforcement and individuals experiencing mental health crises. Recognizing the complexity of these situations, Brookhaven PD has committed to approaches that are both compassionate and grounded in data. For Captain Abrem Ayana, ForceMetrics has become essential to getting the full picture on crime in Brookhaven, while Mental Health Clinician, Victoria Williams, uses the platform to gain as much information about the individuals she will be working with when she joins on-site calls. 

You can hear more directly from Captain Ayana and Victoria Williams in their video interviews on ForceMetrics' YouTube channel.

Challenge

Before ForceMetrics, Brookhaven PD’s officers and mental health clinicians didn’t have a unified, reliable source of data to spot patterns or track repeat calls across individuals. Clinicians on scene often lacked timely access to a person’s history of mental health calls, behaviors, or prior interventions, limiting the ability to make informed decisions that could de-escalate situations. Leadership lacked visibility into mental health call volumes, repeat interactions, and how these intersected with overall resource allocation.

Captain Ayana explains, "ForceMetrics has helped us move our policing from near-real time to real time. It allows our team to become their own individual analysts, when the time is appropriate, but also, supports all the elements of the police department to help the entirety of the organization run more efficiently."

Solution

To address these issues, Brookhaven PD deployed ForceMetrics Velocity™, a centralized, intuitive platform for real-time search, pattern recognition, and case context. The system integrates data from across RMS, CAD, and other internal records, giving users fast, consistent access to information that was previously siloed or difficult to retrieve. Key capabilities include:

• Real-time data access: Clinicians like Victoria can access prior cases, medical/behavioral health notes, and previous law enforcement contacts.
• Dashboards & trend analysis: Leadership (e.g. Captain Ayana) and Victoria can monitor trends – who are the repeat callers, which neighborhoods see more mental health crisis calls, etc.
• Integrated workflows: Because Innovation & Technology is under Captain Ayana, there is institutional support for integrating tools (e.g. Live911, analytics) to feed into clinician workflows.

By consolidating fragmented workflows into a single interface, the platform improves clarity, continuity, and decision-making across the department.

Impact

Investigations: The platform helps surface connections between seemingly unrelated incidents. In one recent investigation, officers linked a suspect’s bright orange shoes to a prior theft, leading to a positive ID that would have taken hours—or analyst support—to uncover using legacy systems.

Field Context: Officers routinely check an address or person before arriving on scene, using prior call history and notes to better understand potential risks, patterns, or community dynamics. This additional context strengthens safety and situational awareness. 

Mental Health Co-Responding: Victoria uses the system during responses to mental health or crisis calls alongside patrol officers, to access history and tailor interventions accordingly.

Command Staff Reporting: Access to regular reports showing actionable insights such as crime trends by day and time, hotspot mapping, IBRs code categorizations (e.g. Assault, Theft, Burglary) that can be shared with leadership to inform training, staffing, and resource allocation decisions. 

Time Savings: Tasks that once required manually scanning reports, asking dispatch for background, or flipping through spreadsheets can now be completed in seconds. This speed has improved both day-to-day efficiency and overall case throughput.

The Power of Numbers: With over 9,700 searches year-to-date, nearly half of Brookhaven PD actively using the platform in the past 90 days, and six power users each surpassing 500 searches, Velocity™ has become an essential tool driving daily investigative work.

For Brookhaven PD, data isn’t just about numbers, it’s about equipping every responder with the insight to act faster, safer, and with greater empathy.

Visit our Contact page to get in touch with our team and see Velocity™ in action.

This case study is based on live interviews with Captain Abrem Ayana and Victoria Williams. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.