SAMARRA, Iraq — A low thud rumbles through the Samarra Joint Coordination Center and in a minute cell phones and radios are buzzing in English and Arabic throughout the building.

It’s a roadside bomb. No, an RKG-3. Or perhaps a grenade.

The reports filter in from Iraqi Army and National Police units, members of the "Sons of Iraq," local policeman and U.S. soldiers. Soon, everyone at the coordination center has a location of the attack and a rough idea of what happened: a grenade tossed at a checkpoint, one National Police officer and a "Sons of Iraq member" slightly injured.

In much of Iraq, information put out by Iraqi and U.S. forces on the same attack often differs greatly in details and casualty numbers, in part because sharing of information is done mostly through interpreters on spotty cell phone connections. By putting members of all the Iraqi security forces, as well as the U.S. Army under one roof in Samarra, the disparate groups have streamlined information sharing in one of Iraq’s most militarized cities.

"Two years ago I was in Kirkuk and we always thought there was information we couldn’t share with the Iraqi army, so we kept it to ourselves," said Lt. Col. Sam Whitehurst, who commands the U.S. efforts in Samarra. "That was a mistake, and when I left I made a vow that if I came back to Iraq I would find a way to share information with my Iraqi security forces brothers."

Across from the cattail prairie surrounding the Tigris River on the edge of Samarra, the Joint Coordination Center, or JCC, is housed in an unassuming white building where members of often competing security forces groups work side by side.

Samarra is the home of the al-Askari mosque, one of the holiest Shiite sites in Iraq. The 2006 bombing that toppled the mosque’s golden dome helped spark Iraq’s sectarian civil war, and for the past two years, the central government has kept Iraqi Army and National Police troops in the city to make sure the mosque remains unharmed while it is reconstructed.

In the city there is tension between Samarran security forces — represented by local police and "Sons of Iraq," a group made up largely of former militants who have renounced violence — and those sent from Baghdad. In the JCC, though, they work together and get access to U.S. technology, like such as surveillance feeds, that they otherwise would not see.

Maj. Patrick Harkins, who oversees day-to-day operations at the JCC, said Iraqis and Americans break bread together at the center and have come to a better understanding through that proximity. After an Iraqi National Police officer accidentally fired his weapon recently, injuring himself and two of his comrades, Harkins even called in an American medical chopper to airlift the men to help.

Having everyone under one roof also has the twin benefit of quelling tensions between different Iraqi security forces and adding peer pressure to keep everyone working hard, said Harkins, of the 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division.

"It does a lot for trust. It does a lot to keep everyone doing their job."