The Fort Wayne Police Department will soon be able to track its cruisers – finally.
Two years after the Fort Wayne City Council approved the $500,000 expense, the police department is ready to roll out the tracking and mapping program meant to improve officer safety and response times.
In May 2008, the council approved paying Spillman Technologies $501,564 to install Global Positioning System tracking devices in 318 police vehicles and a mapping system to manage the fleet. Since that time, delay followed delay as the city tried to integrate the Spillman program with Allen County’s existing mapping system.
“It’s a ridiculously long period of time, there’s no question about that,” said City Councilwoman Karen Goldner, D-2nd.
Goldner, who initially had concerns about the purchase price, said she believes the software will benefit the department.
Jim Haley, Fort Wayne’s information technology director, said to operate the system it had to be integrated with the county’s electronic maps. While the county mapping staff initially thought it could do that work, Haley said it became apparent it would be an overwhelming task. Police Chief Rusty York more bluntly said, “I don’t think it was a priority.”
The major stumbling point was integrating the county’s 1,154 different zones for police and fire dispatchers with the county’s electronic mapping software. After a year of little progress with the county, the city hired an outside firm to complete the map work in June 2009. The $65,352 contract with The Sidwell Co., of St. Charles, Ill., was financed by the county with 911 fees.
But Dave Estes, Allen County Geographic Information Systems administrator, said his department wasn’t asked to help in the integration until the spring of 2009 – although some other general upgrades to the maps were done before that. After about six weeks of discussion, he said it became obvious that his staff couldn’t do the work in a timely manner.
“The amount of work necessary to convert data would have taken several years,” he said.
At that point, he said the city and county decided to hire the outside contractor, who could dedicate more resources to the task.
Goldner said it would have been better to know the need to hire an outside firm at the beginning, both to know the full cost and also because it would have allowed the project to be completed quicker. But, she said, it made sense to let the county try to do it at no cost, and she understood there are other priorities and work for all government employees.
Officer Ryan Moore, with the police department’s information technology unit, said Sidwell completed its work in December. Since that time, the department has been working out a few kinks and customizing it to what works best for the city. The goal is to have the system in place for dispatchers next week and then in the vehicles over the next month.
Program benefits
A quick demonstration of the technology shows it should help the police department work better, York said.
“It’s going to be a great management resource,” he said.
Officer Scott Kizziar, with the information technologies unit, said the program serves three basic functions.
The first involves mapping incidents. It allows every division within the department to create maps of crimes, helping officers cluster crimes to follow patterns. Kizziar also said it could be used to plot all sex offenders in an area where a child goes missing.
Previously, such mapping took far longer and could be done by only a few police employees.
Second, the system will help dispatchers send the closest officers to priority calls. A map will show where a crime is being reported and where police cruisers are in relation to the event. Dispatchers can simply click on the nearest vehicle to assign it the call – providing a critical backup for dispatching officers should the radio systems fail.
It would also allow dispatchers to follow police vehicles on a map and share that information with other officers. This would be helpful during high-speed chases, Kizziar said, as the officer in the chase would no longer have to update his status on the radio and could focus on driving.
Finally, the system will provide Garmin-style directions to officers. When they are dispatched to a crime, the quickest route will be shown on their car computers along with directions similar to what people would find on online mapping websites. The system can even be customized to direct officers around busy streets, road construction or even parades.
York said the system will also help police command staff ensure officers are properly using their vehicles – even allowing them to see how fast officers are driving.
Goldner said while she would most like to see the city hire more officers, budget constraints make that nearly impossible. This system is probably the next best thing.
“This has the opportunity to provide us with more effective deployment of the limited resources we have,” she said.
