By Heron Marquez Estrada, Minneapolis Star Tribune
The first call regarding a motorcycle chase in St. Paul last week got Sgt. Tom Bergren’s attention because speeds approached 100 miles per hour before officers broke off for safety reasons.
Within minutes and blocks of the first incident, reports of a second high-speed chase involving a motorcycle came over his police radio, and Bergren wondered if the two incidents were related.
Normally, Bergren would have waited hours or even days until the incident reports were filed and distributed to see if his hunch was correct.
But thanks to a new wireless records management system, Bergren read the reports electronically within minutes of the chases and while officers were still in the field.
The key features of the St. Paul system are the 160 laptops placed in squad cars, and the software that allows records to be searched electronically for such things as names, addresses, stolen or recovered items, types of crimes and locations of incidents.
With the new system, reports also can be filed, read and approved within minutes instead of hours. Distribution is also handled electronically, much like an e-mail copied to multiple recipients.
On the day of the motorcycle chases, Bergren used these features to search the electronic reports and determine that the same types of motorcycles were involved and that the descriptions of the suspects were similar.
Further detective work connected the cases to a motorcycle theft ring that had robbed a St. Anthony business the night before. A 17-year-old boy arrested after the second chase was not only charged with reckless driving but also with motor vehicle theft. And leads were established that could produce more arrests.
Bergren credits the new computer software system, which went on line in mid-February after years of development, with helping him break the case so quickly.
“This is the future of police work,” he said. “We would have picked it up under the old system, but it would have taken a lot longer.”
Cmdr. Christopher Hoskins, who heads the records unit, said the upgraded records-management system could revolutionize the way police do their jobs. And, it could eventually make their record-keeping virtually paperless.
“It seems a more efficient way of doing things,” he said. “You save resources and staffing time. The goal is to put more officers on the street and allow officers more time on the street.”
Minneapolis police began testing their own wireless system in October of 2001, but haven’t gone as far as St. Paul. So far only 80 of about 200 Minneapolis police cars have been outfitted with the mobile computers.
Lt. Jody Nelson said Minneapolis, instead of building a customized system, extended its existing electronic records system to make it compatible with portable computers.
St. Paul’s department is conducting a one-year study to see how much it will save on paper costs and on staff and officers’ time.
Each year St. Paul police handle more than 200,000 calls for service, which generate more than 125,000 cases. Hoskins said probably twice that many paper reports are eventually written by officers.
Those reports are then copied two or three times by records clerks and delivered to record keepers, district headquarters and specialized units such as homicide, sex crimes and juvenile.
In the past, paper reports were collected at the end of the shift and then driven to headquarters in downtown St. Paul for processing. By the time they were processed and distributed, it could be hours or days from the time of the incident.
Now, officers waiting at a crime scene or even taking a break at a coffee shop can file reports from the field in minutes. The files are then sent to a queue for review by a supervisor. The reviewed files are then sent to records for filing and distribution.
Officer Dana Jabs, who was one of 30 beta testers of the system last year, said the biggest advantage of the system is speed. Reports are now submitted, filed, sorted and distributed within minutes or hours instead of days.
Bergren, for example, noted that in the motorcycle theft case, he did not have to wait days to have the paper records delivered and then have someone go through them to make the connection.
“To us that is a great advantage because we can start working on a case right away,” said Bergren, who works in the auto theft unit and will use the system to electronically track thousands of stolen vehicle reports.
The system should also make it easier to integrate St. Paul and possibly other departments into the long-awaited statewide CriMNet system, which is still years away from completion.
CriMNet is designed to integrate the communications and records systems of Minnesota’s 1,100 or so criminal justice agencies.
Steve Demuth, chief technology officer at Artemis Alliance Inc., which developed the software system for St. Paul, said it was built with the idea of one day hooking into CriMNet.
St. Paul’s system, which was in the planning stages for more than five years, was made possible by $650,000 in federal grants. The St. Paul Police Department, which owns the software, thinks it could be sold or licensed to other departments as a model for managing files.
“I think we’re at the cutting edge, but a lot of departments want to see how things work out,” Jabs said.
Demuth said about two dozen police agencies in the Twin Cities metro area that heard about the system requested more information.
If they were to adopt the system, they would be able to easily share information with other departments using it, he said.
“One would like to see things integrated,” Demuth said, “so St. Paul is not an island.”