Waukesha Deputy Police Chief Dennis Angle calls investigations a puzzle, and with the right pieces, those puzzles can be solved more quickly.
In the case of the homicide involving a 45-year-old Waukesha man inside his downtown apartment last week, one of the pieces was centered around the video surveillance footage provided to police by the OptiCop camera system.
"What OptiCop did is it gave us a piece of that puzzle," Angle said. "There are a series of different pieces (during an investigation), but you need all those pieces to get that complete picture."
The OptiCop cameras installed throughout the city, primarily in the downtown area, helped create this clear picture in identifying Philip N. Holland, a 57-year-old man, accused of killing Timothy Minkley at an apartment on Monday, Sept. 14, at 402 Wisconsin Ave.
Camera work
Angle said the cameras, installed in 2009, feed into its dispatch center and are monitored in real time.
The cameras also record the activity in the area they are placed so police are able to use the footage for investigatory efforts, Angle added.
This allows police to zoom in on specific areas at a certain time, giving officers "real time information" and also "valuable video evidence while a crime is being observed," Angle said.
That's what happened in the most recent homicide, in which items seen on surveillance were located at the suspect's residence.
"We saw the suspect, we saw him in the vicinity of the area and confirmed things he had on him," Angle said at a Sept. 17 news conference, a day after the suspect was taken into custody. "Those were also located on the crime scene."
The camera system led police to Holland's apartment on the northeast side of downtown at 120 Corrina Blvd., just about three blocks away and less than 10 minutes on foot from Minkley's apartment.
Key evidence
The murder of Minkley occurred inside his one-bedroom downtown apartment on Wisconsin Avenue, on the southeast side of downtown. He died from head trauma, according to the medical examiner's office.
During the investigation, police received information indicating that the murder weapon was discarded in the area of the Fox River. Lt. Joe Hendricks said Sept. 17 police located the weapon, later identified in the criminal complaint as a hatchet.
"We would like to thank the dive teams from the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department and Walworth County Sheriff's Department for their continued assistance in searching for evidence," Hendricks said.
After executing a search warrant on the suspect's apartment, police arrested Holland on Wednesday, Sept. 16, less than two days after the killing. Angle said Minkley and the suspect knew each other for two years.
Angle said Holland has a brief criminal history that includes a drug arrest in 2013.
Angle said while the OptiCop cameras assisted police in its investigation, the department developed the suspect first. After getting a general profile of the person of interest, investigators then reviewed the OptiCop camera.
"This made it more efficient because they knew what they were looking for," Angle said.
OptiCop operations
The OptiCop cameras are placed at various vantage points — most of them in highly elevated locations. After an image appears in the camera, a signal is transmitted with that image to a repeater station and to antennas at City Hall, which send the signal into the city's Internet server, transferring the signal to computers in the police department.
While the cameras provide surveillance to help protect city property, they quickly became a source of intelligence during emergency situations and police incidents. The cameras over the years have also assisted in fire department investigations.
In this most recent incident, police said residents should be thankful the city has these cameras.
"The citizens of the city of Waukesha," Angle said, "definitely got their value for that system."