ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – It's a unique partnership. A Canadian police department is turning to Albuquerque police for tips on solving crimes faster, while the Albuquerque Police Department is turning to them for help tackling our homeless problem.  Story continues below DWI Scandal : Another BCSO deputy placed on leave in connection to DWI dismissals Entertainment: Visit these 10 iconic film locations in New Mexico Events: What’s happening around New Mexico March 14-20 “There's an open willingness across different organizations to work together. We all recognize the challenges are similar,” said interim chief of Edmonton police, Warren Driechel. Albuquerque police invited the police chief from Edmonton, the capital of Alberta in Canada, for a meeting to exchange ideas on how police do their work. The Edmonton chief was looking for tips on using technology to fight crime, something APD is known for. The Edmonton team toured APD’s Real Time Crime Center, a staple in the department's toolkit that has helped solve hundreds of crimes. “So we've got some really great technology. How do we optimize that? And those are the things that we can share back and forth together,” said Chief Driechel. Chief Driechel added that he learned a thing or two from APD on how to piece together crimes faster. “They're aggregating all that data together. So very quickly, you can do a search and you're getting a return back from multiple data sources. So that creates a ton of time savings as well as an effectiveness in terms of the members getting the information or the police officers getting the information sooner to be able to react,” said Chief Driechel. In exchange, APD turned to Edmonton police for help handling the homeless. "And so where we had hundreds and literally thousands of kind of encampment complaints we've reduced that to almost none. And so the real benefit of that is from a public perception piece, less encampments, less disorder, but less people were being harmed that were living in those encampments,” said Chief Driechel. He said Edmonton, with double the population of Albuquerque, still faces the same kind of calls. “What might be interesting to the community is the problems that law enforcement faces nationally and internationally, is almost the same,” said Deputy Chief of Albuquerque Police Cecily Barker. APD announced earlier this year that crime is down across the city, crediting the work of its officers and the technology like the Real Time Crime Center. ...read more read less