Wednesday, October 4, 2000
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Wednesday, October 4, 2000 |
| Fayetteville to
arm patrol cars with computers
By JOHN
MUNFORD
As the Fayetteville Police Department leaps into the electronic information age, its officers will rely less on the police radio and more on computers for communications. Each patrol car in the department will soon be fitted with a new computer to allow officers to perform tag checks instantly. Officers will also be able to send messages to other cars much like e-mail. Checking tags with the computers will eliminate the current process of radioing dispatch with a vehicle's tag number and waiting several minutes for the results. Instead, the information will be relayed in a matter of seconds, said Maj. Steve Ledbetter of the Fayetteville Police Department. "It takes three to four minutes on a good day" to run a tag check for a traffic stop, Ledbetter explained. And that's if the computer system isn't bogged down or the dispatcher isn't busy with another call. The shorter wait also enhances the officer's safety, since the computer will warn if the car is stolen and whether the driver is wanted by another agency or "is considered armed and dangerous," Ledbetter said. If the driver is wanted, the computer will send a message to alert all other police cars who are on patrol at the time, Ledbetter added. Though the computers can't run full background checks, they will be able to process driver's license information, Ledbetter said. Each patrol car will be outfitted with a computer screen that allows information to be entered by the touch of a finger. A keyboard will also be handy to type incident reports and accident reports. Those reports, when completed, will be beamed over the airwaves to the supervisor's computer for approval before the report is sent to the department's records office. That will eliminate the current three-day wait for reports to be completed, Ledbetter said. "These cars aren't just cars they're the patrol officer's office," Ledbetter said. "We're looking to have every tool available to help them do their job in a more efficient manner." The computerized reports will also eliminate the need to input the handwritten reports into a computer, which is currently being done by the department's administrative staff, Ledbetter said. "We're trying to expedite the process," he said. The system also allows for using more technology in the near future. The computers could be used to track the exact locations of all patrol cars, for instance. They could also be hooked up to the cars' video cameras to "capture" mug shots of each person that is placed under arrest, Ledbetter said. The total cost of putting computers in each patrol car is $434,000, which also includes the airtime that will be used by the 31-car fleet. Ledbetter, who studied the in-car computer systems of other departments around the nation, said Fayetteville got a good deal with its system. "This is not just something for today," he explained. "We built it for expansion so we won't have to make major changes for quite a number of years."
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