At their most recent meeting, Bradford County commissioners approved spending $64,218 to purchase software and a server to establish the new system.
"It makes the officers out in the street able to view in real time information ... to see if somebody has committed a crime in another town or if another law enforcement agency has dealt with them," said Bradford County Sheriff Clinton Walters.
"Communication is critical for the safety of law enforcement officers," Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko said, adding that the new system will, among other things, help protect police officers.
All of the municipal police departments in Bradford County, as well as the Bradford County Sheriff's Office, will be using the new system, Walters said.
Walters explained that each municipal police department in Bradford County has its own criminal records management system, and the software and server will be used to tie the criminal records management systems of Bradford County police departments together.
Police officers will be able to access the integrated system using computers in their patrol cars or in their stations, he said.
Towanda Police Chief Randy Epler provided additional information on how data from the criminal records management systems will be shared, saying that each police department currently uses Visual Alert software to create and store criminal complaints, which are documents filed by police in a district court each time a defendant is charged with a misdemeanor or felony. A criminal complaint includes information about the defendant, a list of charges that are being filed against him or her, and a narrative explaining why the defendant was charged.
Visual Alert is also used by local police departments to, among other things, keep records of the incidents that a department has investigated and create and store juvenile petitions, which are documents used to file charges against people younger than 18, he said.
The new data sharing system will function as a kind of "hub", allowing officers from one police department to access data from all of the other Visual Alert systems in the county, Epler said.
Police will be able to search the Visual Alert systems countywide using, for example, an address or name, Walters said.
However, Epler noted that officers from one police department will not be able to access the entire Visual Alert system of another police department.
Each police chief will decide how much data from his or her Visual Alert system will be accessible to officers from other departments, Epler explained.
A police department, for example, might allow officers from other departments to see that it had arrested an individual and the year he or she was arrested, but might require that the interested law enforcement officer obtain any further information about the arrest through a telephone call to the police department, he said.
"There are different things that each police officer knows, that are not out there for everybody (all police officers from other local police departments) to see," Epler explained.
The software for the integrated system will be supplied by MetroAlert, the same company that developed the Visual Alert system, officials said.
The integrated system would be useful if, for example, bath salts were found on an individual's property in Canton, but the individual tells the Canton police he has nothing to do with the bath salts, Epler said. Using the integrated system, Canton police might discover that the individual in question had been arrested in Towanda in 2011, and through a follow-up phone call to the Towanda police, discover that the individual is a known bath salts dealer, Epler said.
The new data-sharing system also allows police to post specific information for officers in other police departments to see, Epler said. For example, "if somebody is moving through the county that represents a threat, everybody will be on the same page with that," due to the new system, Bradford County Commissioner Ed Bustin said.
The county will pay for the software and server using revenue from the impact fee and from the county's share of landfilling fees that were generated by the disposal of drill cutting waste, McLinko said.
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