How Anoka County is unifying multijurisdictional response with a common operating platform.
- intrepidnetworks
- Jul 7
- 2 min read
The ability to track officers and assets, preplan incident response and share information in real time is poised to transform daily operations.
Seamless collaboration is critical in public safety, especially in places like Anoka County, Minnesota, where a single incident may require coordinated action from multiple law enforcement agencies. For Lieutenant Nick Steiger, a police officer with the city of Fridley, enhancing that coordination has become a mission. His goal is a countywide deployment of Intrepid Response, a frontline public safety mission support solution that enables communication, collaboration and coordination among special units and across agencies.
Mobilizing a field force
“Anoka County as a whole has always worked well together across jurisdictions,” said Steiger. For decades, Anoka County law enforcement agencies serving a mix of suburban and rural communities have maintained strong bonds and shared resources. Bordering on the northern end of Minneapolis, challenges during the George Floyd-era protests revealed the need for better crowd and field management.
“If you look historically at the management of field operations for mobile field forces in Minneapolis, the biggest challenge has been managing personnel in the field,” Steiger recounted. “They couldn’t get information down to officers in the field, to commanders in the field, sergeants in the field, to give them operation plans. There was just a big void in that area.”
Steiger saw the challenges of managing large-scale deployments. Communication gaps, outdated CAD capabilities and a lack of real-time location tracking hampered officer safety and operational effectiveness. Realizing commanders needed a better way to push information to officers in the field, Steiger proposed demoing Intrepid Response for Anoka County’s mutual aid mobile field force team, North Command Mobile Field Force (NCMFF), consisting of officers from 11 police agencies.
“We need to mobilize up to 130 to 150 people at once for the mobile field force team. Phone trees, paging, signal apps – none of that stuff’s going to work,” said Steiger. What they needed was a more robust solution that would give them a common operating picture and an efficient way to activate NCMFF officers.
