Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sweet Home police officers are now able to access any information they need from their patrol cars.
Last month, Sweet Home Police Department installed Panasonic Toughbooks in each of its patrol cars.
The $80,000 project included eight of the heavy-duty laptops, designed to withstand the bumps and bounces of riding in a patrol car.
“Anything that they can do here in the office, they can do from the car,” said Police Chief Bob Burford. Officers, wirelessly connected to the police station, can bring up reports from the new terminals or they can access and run vehicles in state and national databases. They can bring up photos stored on the SHPD server, or they can access Division of Motor Vehicles for a current license photo. A screen constantly shows officers what calls are waiting for a response, and they can check for warrants.
“It’s a good tool for the officer,” Burford said. The biggest benefit to the department and citizens will be having the officers on the streets more often as the new computers will allow officers to do work in their patrol cars that they have had to do at the department.
“There’s a lot of what I call downtime, when they’re here in the office doing paperwork,” Burford said. This will allow them to work outside the office.
If the department is attempting to deal with an ongoing traffic problem, for example, the officers can sit in their cars in the area and write their reports directly to the department server.
No personal data is stored on the laptops, Burford said. It is all stored on the department’s server at the station. If one of the laptops is stolen, personal information will not be.
A user would need to use a password to access the department’s server, and to even get to that point, the laptop must be connected to a mount inside the patrol car.
Detectives and the school resource officer also use regular laptops.