Pensacola Regional Operations Center (PROC)

Originally part of the Fort Walton Beach Field Office, the Pensacola Branch Office was established in 1972 and became a regional operations center in 1996. PROC encompasses 10 counties stretching from the rural areas bordering Alabama in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south.  The geographical location includes six military bases, thousands of acres of woods and 140 miles of coastline.  

PROC agents and analysts work a variety of criminal investigations focusing on violent crime, economic crime, organized crime, missing children and public integrity. The Pensacola Crime Lab processes evidence for local law enforcement agencies throughout the state and is the only FDLE lab specializing in questioned documents.  
   
The region’s flexible and resilient culture means investigators and forensic scientists will not stop until crimes are solved.  Following Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the PROC building was severely damaged.  While many members had damage to their personal homes, they reported to work and began the clean-up process. Lab members even commuted to Tallahassee to ensure evidence could be processed in a timely manner.  It took 18 months for PROC members to finally have a permanent building again.  

More recently, FDLE Pensacola became home to FDLE’s first Electronic Storage Detection (ESD) canine.  Since 2019, Maple has helped solve hundreds of crimes working search warrants in Northwest Florida by sniffing out anything that can digitally store information hidden by suspects like USB drives, hidden cameras, computers, thumb drives and cell phones.