pedal on the patrol car, which sends it racing toward a residential neighborhood several blocks away. Mounted on the dashboard is a laptop computer. As the officer weaves through traffic, the computer-aided dispatch system has searched the address -- it shows there is a restraining order against the ex-boyfriend -- and moments later a street map and digital mug shot of the suspect appear on the computer's monitor. The officer is armed with an image of the suspect and his criminal history before parking the car at the scene.
A unique collaborative effort to develop this technology is under way between the Sacramento Police Department (SPD) and the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, and their goal is to have it running by the turn of the century. But it's just part of a multimillion-dollar overhaul that will radically change the way SPD does business.
"The department was really lacking in technology. [The grant] really positions us to take advantage of the new opportunities coming down the pipe," said Sacramento Police Chief Arturo Venegas Jr. "We need to use technology to maximize our human potential. This is critical in today's world, when we don't always have the resources to put more people on the streets."
TAKING BACK THE COMMUNITY
The late 1980s and early 1990s brought a different strategy, and metropolitan police departments moved toward a community-based approach aimed at solving the problems instead of reacting to them. In 1994, to Sacramento's benefit, Congress passed sweeping crime legislation to fund the new proactive approach by putting more officers on the streets and applying technology to make officers' time more effective.
In October 1996 the SPD was awarded a $7 million COPS M.O.R.E. (Making Officer Redeployment Effective) grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Initially, the department was expected to match the funds, but that requirement was later dropped, and the feds contributed another $2.4 million.
The grant money provided SPD with the needed replacement of an aging CAD and an outdated RMS -- both of which have been in service nearly 15 years. While replacing those systems are among the department's top priorities, Najera said much of the grant money will go toward developing a system of field reporting for the "line troops."
At the heart of the field-reporting proposal is a plan to issue a laptop computer to each sworn officer on the SPD force -- more than 600 in all. Each officer would mount the assigned laptop in a docking station in the patrol car and directly input incident reports and other forms from the field. "That way you don't have clerks re-typing the data into the RMS system. It helps to ensure the accuracy of the data, if it's being input from a single point of collection," said Capt. Scott LaCosse, project manager for the SPD data services division.
The system would electronically transfer files to the records division via radio frequency. Those files, in turn, would be available to every division instead of having multiple paper copies.
The department is looking at several possibilities to make filling out reports easier for the officers. Voice recognition software is one possibility that could allow an officer to dictate details of a incident to the laptop while driving back to headquarters. LaCosse said integrating GIS could allow officers to pinpoint a crime scene or a traffic accident. The new laptop system would replace the current dumb mobile data terminals in the department's 130 cruisers and be menu-driven, prompting the officer with a new set of options based on the type of call and other information seamlessly provided by the dispatch computer.
Information such as name, date of birth and other common data can be entered once and then populate other forms and records in the database. Ultimately, it will cut out the redundancy of filling out multiple reports.
"If it saves an hour a day, and there are 600 officers on the street, then that's 600 officer hours a day that can be freed up for other activities," LaCosse said. "The goal is to make more time available for community-oriented policing."
A REGIONAL IMAGING SYSTEM
While it may be 18 months before SPD buys the new laptops, the department is already helping to shape a regional imaging solution for mug shots. Since the sheriff's department runs the county jail and takes mug shots of inmates, SPD is working with the county to ensure that a new digital photo system will be compatible with the police department's network and laptops. The collaboration also includes the Sacramento County Probation Department and juvenile hall.
Michael Linn-Kidwell, the sheriff's department's Cal-ID fingerprinting program manager and digital image guru, said the department -- which photographs 50,000 to 60,000 inmates a year -- hopes to spend only 5 percent of what it currently spends on instant Polaroid film after the Automated Mug Shot Program is implemented, he said.
"One of the best things you can give an investigator in the field is an image," Linn-Kidwell said, and he gets excited about the possibility of sending an image to an officer for a virtual lineup at the scene of a crime. "Suppose an officer does a search on every sex offender in a one-mile radius, then shows those pictures to the victim. 'Is this the one? Is this the one?' That can be very powerful and it can save many, many investigator hours. But all of it starts with getting the digital photos stored," he said
Lawyers for the city and county are carefully reviewing a proposed $500,000 contract with Technology for Productivity (TFP) -- a 10-year-old Greenville, S.C.,-based firm specializing in digital mug shot systems. The plan calls for SPD and the sheriff's department to each have a digital image server -- in case one goes down -- and as many as 10 workstations each with cameras to capture the mug shots.
Todd Pastorini, TFP's west coast regional sales manager, said the workstations would likely be equipped with a 233MHz Intel Pentium II processor, 64MB of RAM and the Windows NT 4.0 operating system. Due to the county's existing standards the back-end database will be an Oracle relational database management system.
Pastorini called the planned Sacramento regional automated mug shot system "cutting edge" because the resolution -- 1,000x1,250 -- will produce more than a million pixels per photo. "These are the highest quality images being captured for mug shots that we know of in the country, or the world," he said. Most other agencies are still using video capture rather than high-resolution digital cameras. "The technology has grown to the point that we have the ability to get a photo that's as good as what we get from 35-millimeter film. Why should we invest in a technology that produces less quality than what we're getting right now?" Linn-Kidwell said.
The highest possible resolution was necessary, because the sheriff's department is interested in a partnership with nearby Lawrence Livermore Laboratories for experimental facial recognition software, which would allow them to capture a photo of a suspect and search it against the database using a two-dimensional algorithm "without entering any descriptive data," Linn-Kidwell said. Capt. LaCosse said SPD might consider using an off-the-shelf product instead.
In January SPD and the sheriff's department strung fiber-optic cables between the respective headquarters -- spanning two city blocks -- marking the first tangible step toward completing the mug shot project. Police departments in Galt, Folsom and Isleton, and other Sacramento-area law enforcement agencies are expected to come aboard once the system is working.
"We work great together in times of disaster, but generally we have stand-alone systems," said Linn-Kidwell. "Traditionally there's been friction between the departments. It's the 'us-against-them' mentality, but I'm happy with how much success we've had with this."
"The partnerships we've made, not just in technology but also other areas, have helped us get beyond those obstacles that historically have hindered the sharing of information between law enforcement agencies," Chief Venegas said. "The crooks don't care about the boundaries of cities and counties. If they catch our crooks or we catch their crooks, it's a win for the citizens."
Corey Grice is a Sacramento, Calif.-based writer.
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