Wednesday, December 5, 2001
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Wednesday, December 5, 2001 |
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Wireless computers put cops in the driver's seat By JOHN
MUNFORD
A wireless computer system used in Fayetteville's police cars is enhancing officer safety and productivity at the same time. The in-car computer system, which has been in use for several months now, allows officers wireless access to criminal databases. This means officers can run a check on an individual's drivers license, see if there are any warrants out for his/her arrest and determine quickly whether a vehicle has been stolen. The catch is the speed with which this activity takes place: from the time the officer sends his request from the patrol car, a reply generally comes back within 10 seconds. And if a "hit" comes back from that search, the computer can wirelesly alert all other patrol vehicles logged on to the system so they can respond to the scene for backup if necessary, said Lt. Jeff Harris. "It gives us a tremendous advantage," Harris said. Before the system was in place, Fayetteville officers depended on 911 operators to run warrant and tag checks for them ... and those checks could take several minutes or more depending on whether the system is backed up. Now the time lag is down to 10 seconds or less, partly due to the state's computer database giving a higher priority to requests from patrol cars, Harris noted. "It's an extreme time-saving element," said Maj. Steve Ledbetter. Another advantage of the in-car computers is that officers can communicate with messages similar to e-mail, right from the seat of their patrol vehicles. Also, administrative messages may be sent to all cars from the base station at police headquarters. The computers also are helping officers stay in the field to do their paperwork such as incident and accident reports, Ledbetter said. Doing so also saves time because the computer program for filing accident reports streamlines the previously time-consuming process of drawing diagrams of the accident, Harris said. And when the reports are complete, the officers submit them to a mainframe computer at police headquarters via the wireless network ... without leaving their patrol vehicles. This has improved the turnaround time on reports; previously employees in the records department had to type in the officers' handwritten reports so they could be filed with the state, Ledbetter said. Now, many reports can be available to the public the same day, whereas it used to take up to three days for them to be ready, Ledbetter said. It also frees up the three full-time records employees for other tasks, he said. The system, which cost over $400,000, is expandable to the point that other nearby police agencies can "tap in" to use Fayetteville's system, Ledbetter said. The theory is that those agencies would pay a fee to Fayetteville for the service, he said. The system also is expandable in a variety of ways. One upgrade would allow all dispatching to be done via the in-car computer system, with 911 operators typing messages that would be beamed wirelessly to the appropriate patrol car. Another upgrade would allow each patrol vehicle to be linked to a Global Positioning Satellite system so its location can be constantly monitored. Getting the system up and running was not an easy task. After studying the various systems available beginning in 1995, the department finally made a recommendation to the City Council for funding in 1999. Even once all patrol cars had the system installed, there were plenty of bugs to be worked out, Ledbetter said. The system used by Fayetteville, which can't be decoded even if the signals were intercepted, uses several different providers including Southern Link for the transmission system, Cerulean software, and Data 911 for hardware.
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