Sharing Works Wonders
As in many other small communities across the country, police departments in Stearns County, Minn., were unable to share information resources among themselves due to a lack of technical coordination.
The county’s Information Services (IS) Department teamed up with then-Stearns County Sheriff Jim Kostreba in 1998 to link up the county’s 15 police departments via a system dubbed Automated Public Safety (APS). The biggest obstacle was trying to win the endorsement of police chiefs accustomed to acting independently and convince them to work jointly with county sheriffs, says George McClure, director of Stearns County’s IS department.
Originally valued at $1.5 million, the APS system was based on several modular applications from VisionAir, including a computer-assisted 911 dispatch system, a mobile computing system, a collaborative records management system, a unified prison management system, and secure email.
Local police departments would only be responsible for purchasing computers for police vehicles and department offices and paying for licenses; all other functions would be carried out by the county, including technical support, implementation wiring, and design consulting.
Today, the system allows county-wide sharing of dispatches, criminal backgrounds, investigation data, jail records, and National Crime Information Center data, even from a police vehicle’s notebook PC. And because the system operates via a wireless IP network with countywide servers, people cannot overhear radio-based communications through scanners, says McClure.
The APS also features mapping capabilities and the ability to show the location of any officer in real time
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Government Technology (10/03) Vol. 16, No. 13, P. 18; Harris, Blake.