Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Computers to help police share data

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 19:09:31 -0400

Computers to help police share data
By BRYAN CORBIN
Daily Journal News Editor
[email-masked]

While local police, sheriff’s deputies and town marshals
typically are eager to assist each other, they admit they
could share their information better.

Officers investigating a crime might not realize at first that
their counterparts in a nearby town are investigating the
same type of crime, committed by the same suspect.

That is about to change.

All nine police departments in Johnson County soon will
share their crime data on the same computer system.
Using a laptop computer in his squad car, a Franklin officer
will be able to retrieve the electronic police records of a
burglary investigated by Greenwood police. A New
Whiteland officer who pulls over a speeding driver will know
immediately that county sheriff’s deputies investigated the
same suspect for drug dealing the month before.

And they will be able to obtain information directly without
phoning their colleagues or having it relayed over the police
radio by dispatchers. Such data-sharing is an ability they
haven’t had until now.

“It’s going to have an impact. It’s going to improve law
enforcement abilities,” Greenwood Police Chief Al
Hessman said. “There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever
that the level of intelligence and information is going to
improve productivity, improve investigations and improve
communication substantially over the way it’s been in the
past.”

Edinburgh Deputy Police Chief David Lutz was similarly
enthusiastic.

“It’s going to greatly bring us into the 21st century, and I
can’t say enough about it. I’ve been waiting for this for
years,” Lutz said.

The project, the Johnson County Law Enforcement Data
System, is an upgrade and expansion of the Spillman
Technologies software that Franklin and Greenwood police
already use to simultaneously dispatch police calls and
generate reports.

While not making the police radio obsolete, the voiceless
dispatch system will let dispatchers assign officers to
routine calls via electronic messages sent to their laptops,
rather than radio broadcasts. Officers also can transmit
written messages to each other, car to car. (Emergency
calls still will be broadcast over the police radio.)

Features that might be added include transmitting digital
photos to laptops in moving cars, or a mapping program
that could direct officers to crime scenes. And early next
year, Bureau of Motor Vehicles records might be available
for officers to access from their cars, rather than asking
their dispatchers to trace license numbers back at the
police station.

The data-sharing system “will enhance our knowledge on
criminals,” Lutz said.

Suppose Edinburgh police arrest a shoplifter at the
Edinburgh Outlet Mall. In the shoplifter’s car, officers find
merchandise apparently stolen from other stores. With the
data-sharing system, Edinburgh police could pull
Greenwood police reports and learn that an hour before, a
shoplifter fitting the description escaped Greenwood Park
Mall carrying an armful of loot. They could tip off
Greenwood police to a likely suspect.

Records constantly updated

Under the new data-sharing system, the moment someone
calls police, the dispatcher creates an electronic name-file
on the computer. A file will exist electronically whether a
person is a crime victim, witness or suspect. It will be
updated with each new incident involving the same
individual. Officers can access name-file records to learn of
prior police contacts the same person had.

“Every time we deal with a person, it attaches to that
name-file,” said Franklin Police Capt. Joe Gruss. “Now,
every time any (officer) in Johnson County deals with that
person, it’s going to attach to that name-file. What a great
resource.”

If a suspect had a background of firearms offenses, or if a
court had issued a protective order against him, police
could discover that in a fraction of the time it takes today.
Names of dangerous suspects would be red-flagged. And
officers would retrieve the information on the laptop
computers in their cars.

“It’s going to give us real-time access, out on the street, to
reports and activities,” Hessman said.

Scheduled to go live July 25, the system will start by
merging years of name-files from Franklin and Greenwood
police, about 100,000 records total. More names will be
continually added as other departments convert to the
Spillman software.

“In no time, we will amass a database of names, vehicles
and offenders that’s going to make identification
procedures so much more beneficial to us,” said Gruss,
who is the local project manager for the countywide data
system.

“We would hope that every officer, when he comes on
duty, would take the time to at least review the recent
reports and the ones that catch his attention, investigate
those in-depth through the computer,” Gruss said. “And
they’ll be able to do that. They’ll be able to look at every
report that was taken in Johnson County, from the ‘go-live’
date, forward.”

Gruss acknowledged that a government database that
tracks a citizen’s every interaction with police could sound
Orwellian.

“‘Big Brother-ish?’ I can see where there would be room for
that opinion,” Gruss said.

But Gruss noted that the data is exactly the same type of
information — records of complaints, vehicle descriptions,
previous arrests — that police have always kept. The
difference is they will share the data with other
departments, electronically.

Gruss emphasized that the police data system has
firewalls and security procedures built in, so that
individuals’ personal information will not be misused.

“Is there a potential for abuse? I can’t think of an example
that would be abuse,” Gruss said.

Johnson County Sheriff Terry McLaughlin agreed.

“Nothing is changing as far as the basic information that
we get, and have been getting, since the inception of
taking reports,” McLaughlin said.

First voice, now data

Data-sharing is the flipside of the countywide radio network
that allowed all police and fire departments to broadcast
voices on the same 800-megahertz radio frequencies,
starting in January 2002.

The consortium of police departments and county
government that developed the radio system decided to
expand it to data-sharing, Gruss said.

But poor radio signals prompted Greenwood police in June
to drop out of the countywide radio network for nine
months, until equipment was installed to boost signal
quality.

The data system, like the radio system, broadcasts on
800-megahertz frequencies. The difference is signal
strength. Greenwood officers had difficulty broadcasting on
their 5-watt handheld radios, especially inside buildings.
By contrast, the laptops will transmit and receive data over
more powerful 35-watt modem-antennas mounted on police
cars, making signal quality less of an issue.

Hessman is not concerned about technical glitches with
data-sharing like those that forced him to temporarily pull
the plug on the radio system.

“If the data stream itself was not to function, out in the car,
it’s not going to stop and hinder our operations,” Hessman
said. “We will continue to do what we already do.”

Officers from across the county begin training on the new
system starting today. With about 200 officers who must
get trained countywide — and even more dispatchers and
jailers — training could last a couple of months.

Total costs of the Johnson County Law Enforcement Data
System are about $1.7 million, said Joe Pitcher, the
county attorney. That includes the Spillman Technologies
software; a Sun Microsystems Unix-based computer
server, which manages the data, located at the county jail;
and 200 in-car laptops and modem-antennas for police
cars from Motorola. Part of the cost was covered by the
Enhanced 911 surcharge on residents’ phone bills and part
by bonds the county issued for police radios several years
ago.

Pitcher noted that Johnson County is one of the few
communities in the nation to develop a police data-sharing
system. That criminal-history and intelligence-sharing
capability is something homeland security officials are
encouraging local police everywhere to do, he said.

“We’ll be up and running when they’re still designing and
thinking,” Pitcher said.

Portions © 2003 The Daily Journal, Johnson County, Indian

http://www.thejournalnet.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=113&ArticleID=35470

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