The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 26, Number 1 | Page 12

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | September 2019
Continued from previous page
responders with a common operating picture and the ability to easily communicate location information.
CRGs evolved from the same type of battle-proven maps successfully used by the United States Special Operations community
to conduct thousands of operations during the global war on terror. With aerial imagery, building floor plans, and critical
building features all combined into one easily accessible map, CRGs changed the paradigm with respect to common operating
pictures and multi-jurisdictional response.
First responders, whether or not they’ve ever been to a location, can easily use the alpha-numeric grid to effectively
communicate location and gain situational awareness. On a CRG, north is always up, meaning cardinal directions are easily
and instantly discernable. Think of the sheer number of transmissions during the Virginia Beach incident that revolved around
simply trying to communicate and accurately determine cardinal direction.
The first white paper on the use of CRGs was published in the New Jersey Police Chief magazine in February of 2017. Just over
two years later, over 500 hundred schools in 19 of New Jersey’s 21 counties have been mapped with CRGs. In addition, a large
and growing number of critical infrastructure facilities have been mapped.
As a result, police chiefs in Ocean County, for example, have every floor plan of every school in their jurisdiction available via
the smartphone in their back pocket. That means that in the event of a critical incident, whether they’re in their office, their
house, or a meeting half-a-state away, they have instant access to the common operating picture as well as real-time location
of their personnel resources (blue force tracking).
What’s more, should their agency be called on to assist neighboring jurisdictions (or any jurisdiction in the county for that
matter), their officers have instant access to the maps and floorplans of the schools in those jurisdictions. This instant
availability of a common operating picture across multiple jurisdictions is unprecedented and, quite frankly, a game changer.
If the clock started ticking right now while you’re reading this, how long would it take you and your responding officers to get
an accurate floor plan for a school in your jurisdiction physically in your hands?
Now consider that any chief or officer in 17 of the state’s 21 counties can have the up to date and accurate floor plans of
almost any school in their respective counties in their hand in under 30 seconds.
A Common Operating Picture Best Practice
In the latest development, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (OHS&P) has recognized CRGs as a
Protective Measures Best Practice and has partnered with the New Jersey State Police to pursue a Statewide Mapping Initiative
using the technique and technology.
The New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police had the expertise, courage, and foresight to recognize over two years ago
that CRGs represented a critical solution to the common operating picture problem that continues to plague responders in
incident after incident across the nation.
Chiefs of police associations in many other states are now following New Jersey’s lead.
We all know the importance of best practices. We follow them in our development of policies and daily practices. We embrace
them through the State Accreditation process, conscious of the extreme liability and lack of reasonable explanation for failing
to follow them (especially when we belong to an organization that expends great effort to provide them to us).
As our communities continue to cumulatively spend millions of dollars to mitigate threats and prepare for the eventuality of an
active killer/critical incident, it is our shared responsibility as public safety leaders to ensure that a proven and recognized best
practice—one that is so critical to the effective response and resolution of a critical incident-- is readily available to our
agencies and personnel.
Being in New Jersey has given us a unique opportunity to be ahead of the curve in active killer response. This is fortunate for
both our personnel and those we’re sworn to protect—because falling behind can have terrible consequences.
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