By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Philadelphia police demonstrated their ever expanding high-tech “Real Time Crime Center,” which is beginning to bring the magic of your favorite TV cop show to real life crime fighting.

Police are monitoring nearly 2,000 cameras for crime activity and this technology is being married to other high tech databases.

Police see a time soon when many thousands of cameras will be online preventing and solving crimes.

Sargaent Jay Bowen cites one recent case; it began with a report of man with a gun in a busy park and it was on camera.

“This individual here runs and, as he’s doing here, he’s discarding what appears to be a handgun and some narcotics,” says Bowen.

But this potentially dangerous situation ended with a quick arrest by on-flash information from video.

Video is just part of this story. With other technologies joined under this roof, a nickname or distinctive body marking can result in a suspect’s names in an instant, and license plate reading cameras on cop cars scan thousands of plates a day. Over 140 stolen autos have been recovered.