The Citrix Presentation Server provides officers secure access to the police department's technology systems and specific applications such as the File Maker Pro records management system and the state of Connecticut's COLLECT -- Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) database, which contains state and national motor vehicle records and criminal history records -- from the department's patrol cars via wireless Iternet connections. With Citrix, the Weston Police department allows officers to spend more of their time out in the community instead of being bound to their desks at headquarters. This foundation increases the productivity of its officers by delivering continuous, reliable access to their records management databases and Computer Aided Dispatch systems regardless of officer locations being inside the station, in the field or in a patrol car.
Before implementing Citrix, the police department relied on antiquated radio systems to dispatch information among squad cars, leading to considerable lag-time in receiving or sharing information. Also, officers had to go back to the office after their daily shift to file reports. Moreover, there was no easy way to integrate the department's database with the state systems, making it difficult and time-intensive to do background searches on criminals and find or share information on stolen property. As a result of these inefficiencies, the officers were spending as much as half their time at headquarters filling out paperwork instead of serving the community.
Today using Citrix, applications are centrally deployed and managed on Citrix Presentation Server, and each patrol car has a tablet PC that can access applications, including municipal, state, and federal criminal records, over a wireless network in real-time. Now time lags and dropped calls that plagued communications no longer exist. The officers log in once and have uninterrupted access to all their applications while they change devices and network connections, even when they drive through wireless dead zones in their police cruisers.
"By using Citrix, we're no longer hand-cuffed to proprietary, desktop-based systems that are constantly interrupted, requiring us to re-sign on, reload, or reconfigure our devices," said Patrick Daubert, sergeant for the police department in Weston, Conn. "Our police officers are now working smarter. We estimate that with this technology in place, our officers are spending 40 percent more time in the field with the citizens of Weston and less time at headquarters filling out reports."
