Today's Police Departments require not
only the latest technology, but also the most reliable.
Officers cannot afford to go onto the streets without
being armed with information. The MPD Intranet helped
to fill this gap. With over 70 databases accessible
on the Police intranet at their desk or in their car,
a simple interface was required to manage all of this
data and not get lost in this "sea of information".
The Process
The home page of the MPD intranet displays
the most relevant information for the officers shifts.
Items 
include
the most recent stolen vehicles, BOLO's (Be on the
lookout) with photos, weather maps and much more.
The tools that are available to officers
are very specialized for each task. One such tool is
the mugshot system. Officers in the field have access
to over 50,000 mugshots via the intranet in their cars
and this tool has identified many suspects without
having to return to the station to retrieve this information.
With the amount of data available to the
police officers, the Super Query tool was developed
to help process all of the information in a reasonable
amount of time. The Super Query can search through
over five hundred thousand records in a matter of seconds.
Just a few of the options that can be searched include
addresses, partial names, partial license plates, vehicle
makes and colors.
A
new technology that was developed by Google and further
developed for the MPD Intranet is Google maps. The
data on the maps is automatically populated by reading
the crime data from existing databases eliminating
the need for a person to manually create the maps.
Visual maps of crimes and sex offenders are easier
to process than a plain text list. These maps can pinpoint
crimes, sex offenders and problems areas. Several other
departments outside the Police Department are now utilizing
this technology. Similar applications from commercial
vendors are priced over $80,000.00. Think of how you
can use this open source technology for free.
Numerous other databases have helped the
Police Department save money and allocate resources
elsewhere. All of the ideas for the MPD Intranet come
from the people that use it daily and this has enabled
it to grow tremendously since its inception several
years ago.
The Hardware
The
Panasonic CF-28 laptop could be considered the Abrams
Battle Tank of the laptop world. This unit meets
Military Specifications for heat, vibration and durability.
The unit is encased in a Magnesium alloy housing
and is completely moisture and dust resistant. The
hard drive is encased in a gel packed case to help
dampen any vibrations that would destroy a normal
hard drive and its data.
While the laptop spends 100% of its time
in the trunk of the police car, a device called a PDRC
sits up front with the officer. The PDRC is a ruggedized
display screen and is touch screen enabled so that
officer can request information on the computer by
simply touching items on the screen. The officer also
has a regular keyboard that is used when they need
to enter or request specific data. The computer also
has built-in wireless LAN so that the officers can
receive large software or map updates when they're
near a WIFI hotspot at a city facility.
The communications hardware for getting
all of the data to and from the police vehicles is
the Sierra
Wireless
MP775. This modem is also ruggedized and is designed
for the harshest environments. This modem can transmit
data at speeds over 150kbps and was designed for wide
area mobile communications. This modem also helps address
officer safety by transmitting GPS coordinates back
to the Police Dispatch center. Dispatchers can easily
see where any patrol car or fire apparatus is at by
looking at the GPS mapping screen on their dispatch
console.
