Santa Ana’s police Sgt. Raul Luna was near his patrol car when approached by an officer from a different north Orange County police department. The pair didn’t talk about the latest criminal case or community policing. Instead, they talked about Rocky II, the Amrel-built laptop computer in Lowery’s patrol car.
“He was impressed with the back-lit keyboard,” said Luna. “You rarely see that on a police computer because it’s a higher-end option. It’s very valuable because it’s an issue of officer safety for us. In our business, in the dark it comes in handy. You don’t want to expose yourself by lighting up the interior of a patrol car.”
Everywhere you turn in Orange County, the police are going high-tech, with computers that can do everything from searching the penal code to drawing accident-scene diagrams.
While police have had computers in their squad cars for more than a decade, they were considered “dumb computers,” providing only some basic information like checking driver licenses and looking for search warrants. Now, the police are beginning to sound more like Bill Gates than Joe Friday.
“We’re getting Intel Pentium II with 300 megahertz, and 192 megabytes of RAM,we paid extra for that,” said Irvine Police Lt. Al Muir, who is overseeing the installation of the Irvine system. “A 6.3 gigabyte hard drive. We’ll have slots for PC cards. … We have spill-resistant keyboards. Windows NT. The laptops have docking stations with swivels. If Panasonic makes changes to its rugged laptops, we have the option to make sure we’re getting the best.”
Access to Data
The patrol car computer has gone from Volkswagen to Porsche. They can pull up images of crime scenes and photos of missing children. They can send faxes. They can quickly check the National Crime Registry. They can call up the entire state penal code or the vehicle code.
Many officers carry the three-inch-thick California Peace Officers Legal Sourcebook, which was a paper-intensive system that previously took a lot of time to update but now can be updated in seconds on the laptops. Some computers can take a driver’s license and swipe it like a credit card to get an instant report, where a photo in the state’s databank can be compared to the one on the license to see if it’s fake. Thumbprints can be sent from the field. Other programs will save officers the time of drawing maps at the scene of an accident.
The companies involved in supplying technology for police cars range from the big to the small. The computers are from Toshiba, Motorola, Panasonic and Amrel. Some are installed permanently while others are true laptops, with a police officer able to pull it out and take it with him or her. The software is being designed by firms like Mobile Access Software Inc. (MASI) of San Diego or UCS of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Modems are provided by Motorola. Wide-area networks are being installed by Orange-based Worldwide Wireless Networks Inc, which is testing cutting-edge technology and working with OC tech giants Broadcom Corp. and Conexant Systems Inc. (see accompanying story).
Irvine is spending $1 million to outfit 60 cars with laptops. Santa Ana is spending $3 million for its 400 sworn officers while Huntington Beach has a budget of $2.5 million.
Funding Available
The agencies can go after the new technologies because of extra funding for police forces from state and national government entities. Police in Orange County have decided that rather than hire new officers, these funds would be better spent on upgrading technology. The thinking is that officers will spend less time filling out reports and more time in the field.
“These officers spend 20% to 40% of their time filling out reports,” said Pete Robinson, president of the software-designing firm MASI. “If we can save 10% of that time, we’re basically adding people to a force without the costs of training. It allows the police to spend more time in the field.”
Both Santa Ana and Irvine are using software made by MASI, a 3-year-old company that’s making a push in Orange County, having hired political consulting firm Ellis & Hart of Irvine. MASI first installed its software in the San Diego Police Department, the first large-scale system of this type in the country, with 1,300 users.
“It’s really quite difficult,” said Robinson. “You encounter challenges of having 1,300 databases out there and then moving that information to a large database. And you cannot make mistakes.”
Varied Choices
Since the systems are relatively new, the police departments are not uniform in what they’re choosing. For example, Huntington Beach uses a Motorola laptop with touch-screen technology, similar to what the U.S. Navy uses. Its software is being provided by UCS of Florida.
“Now the officer doesn’t have to key in something when he is driving. He can touch the screen,” said Capt. Jon Arnold, special operations division commander for Huntington Beach.
OC’s police forces routinely go over to other departments to inspect their systems. There’s a healthy sense of competition among them.
“I’d rate ours as one of the best, if not the best in the country. We’re on the leading edge of technology,” said Santa Ana Sgt. Malcolm Lowery, his department’s point man for computers.
But Newport Beach’s Police Department was among the first to install laptops. Toshiba’s Specialized Engineering Group, based in Irvine, made their laptops a little bit more rugged than normal and installed a shade to reduce glare.
But those laptops weren’t rugged enough for the Santa Ana and Irvine police forces, which chose Amrel’s Rocky II and Panasonic Model 27 laptops, respectively.
“Toshiba was very interested in trying to get our business, but at this current time, they didn’t have a rugged model. They’re working with Newport Beach to make it more rugged,” said Irvine’s Muir.
When Santa Ana’s department went looking for laptops, it tested several models. Arcadia-based Amrel at first didn’t look impressive, but it came back with several improvements that make it easier for the police to maintain and upgrade the laptops.
“It’s amazing that they listened to us. They’re now selling these laptops throughout the county,” said Lowery.
Santa Ana police became believers when an Amrel salesman put a Rocky II laptop in a sink.
“I thought he was going to dab some water on it. He left the faucet running over the laptop,” said Lowery. “He started it up afterwards with no problems.”
The police are constantly looking for new technology to add. For example, Huntington Beach police want a voice-activated system and are working with Voice Automation, a Huntington Beach-based value-added reseller.
“All a police officer would have to do is say, ‘Beach and Adams,’ and a map will pop up,” said Jim Moore, information systems manager for the Huntington Beach Police Department. “The technology isn’t there yet, but we figure it will be in two years.” n
