Pocatello Police | A real time crime center inside a traffic safety grant
In May 2026 the Pocatello City Council voted four to one to apply for a $25 million federal grant for post-crash care. The application proposes a real time crime center with live street and traffic camera feeds, officer location tracking and drone support.
At a glance
- Authorized
- 21 May 2026. The Council voted four to one to authorize submission of the application and to accept the grant if it is awarded [1] [2]
- Size
- $31,582,400 total project cost. A $25,000,000 federal grant with a $6,582,400 local match, a minimum of 20 percent [1]
- What the money is for
- Renovating the Police Department's half of 911 North 7th Avenue to expand the dispatch center, upgrade computer aided dispatch, integrate traffic incident management, support drone response and implement real time crime center data [3]
- What the crime center would do
- Carry centralized video and data feeds, give operators space to monitor live feeds from street cameras and traffic cameras, track the real-time location of officers, incorporate live drone support as part of mobile command, and act as a central hub for intelligence sharing [3]
- Where the grant comes from
- The US Department of Transportation's Safe Streets and Roads for All program. The city took a planning grant from it in 2022 and used it to write its Vision Zero Action Plan [2] [3]
- When
- The application proposes grant award and agreement execution from November 2026, and a five-year period of performance from November 2027 [3]
- Awarded
- Not as of the records we read. The Council authorized the application; nothing we found records a decision by the granting agency [1] [2]
- Public comment received
- None is recorded. The item was an action item rather than a public hearing. The minutes record an extended exchange between council members and city staff about the local match and about whether City Hall would move [2]
How it happened
- Context
A planning grant becomes a Vision Zero plan
The city receives a Safe Streets and Roads for All planning grant and uses it to develop its Vision Zero Action Plan, the document the later implementation application builds on. [2]
- Decision
Authorized, four votes to one
The Grants Manager and the Planning Manager present the application. The Council's questions are about the local match across the five-year period, about four funding scenarios mixing foregone property tax revenue and General Fund money, and about whether City Hall would have to move out of 911 North 7th Avenue to make room. Four members vote to authorize submission and one votes against. [1] [2]
This one is the reason a keyword sweep has to cover a whole matrix rather than the technology you already know about.
What the Council voted on
On 21 May 2026 the Pocatello City Council took up item 10: authorize submission of a US Department of Transportation Safe Streets and Roads for All implementation grant application, for public safety facility upgrades. Total project cost $31,582,400. Federal share $25,000,000. Local match $6,582,400, a minimum of 20 percent.
The Grants Manager and the Planning Manager presented it. The council’s questions, as the minutes record them, were about money and about buildings: how the city would cover the match across five years, which of four funding scenarios it would use, whether City Hall would move out of 911 North 7th Avenue to give the Police Department the room, and what happens to the project if it cannot. Four members voted to authorize the application. One voted against.
What is inside the application
The agenda item says public safety facility upgrades. The application in the packet is more specific. It proposes renovating the Police Department’s portion of 911 North 7th Avenue to expand the dispatch center, and to make room for computer aided dispatch upgrades, integration with a traffic incident management system, drone response, a unified command area, and implementation of real time crime center data.
On what the crime center would be, the application is plainer still. It would carry centralized video and data feeds. The renovated dispatch offices would give operators the space to monitor live feeds from street cameras and traffic cameras and pass what they see straight to officers. It would track the real-time location of officers to send the closest unit. It would incorporate live drone support as part of mobile command. And it would serve as a central hub for intelligence sharing.
The sentence that connects it to everything else
The application also says this, in passing, while explaining why the city is well placed to build one: “The City of Pocatello recently adopted the Flock system and has video surveillance at major intersections through its Traffic Control Center.”
That is the first record we found of the city operating cameras at major intersections. It appears in a grant application about crash response, not in a council decision about cameras.
Why the framing matters
Everything in the last three paragraphs is accurate to the document, and the document’s purpose is improving care after a road crash. The city applied for the money under a program built for road safety, using a Vision Zero plan it wrote with an earlier grant from the same program. The response time argument the application makes is a real one, and the dispatch center it describes is genuinely cramped.
It is also how a room that watches live camera feeds, tracks officers and centralizes intelligence gets built. The decision to build one was made on 21 May 2026, in a vote whose recorded discussion was about the local match and the location of City Hall.
What we do not know
- Has the grant been awarded? Nothing in the records we read says so.
- How many traffic cameras does the city operate through its Traffic Control Center, where are they, and who can see them now?
- Would the crime center carry the plate reader network's feeds as well as the traffic cameras? The application names the Flock system as context and does not say.
- What would the intelligence sharing hub share, and with whom? The application uses the phrase and does not define it.
- Is there any policy governing a real time crime center, and would one be written before the room is built?
What you can do
Show up
Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have confirmed where each of them meets in Bannock County and how public comment works there.
How to show up in Bannock County →Protect yourself
Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.
Surveillance Self-Defense →Sources
- 1.
- 2. Pocatello City Council minutes, 21 May 2026 · Meeting record · · accessed
- 3. Safe Streets and Roads for All implementation grant application narrative, City Council packet of 21 May 2026 · Meeting record · · accessed
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