From a rocky start, the Indiana General Assembly has settled into a more contemplative, polite and even productive mode in the second half of its session.The added safety and efficiency the GPS tracking system will give city police makes it worth the two-year wait.
The GPS system was initially embraced for its ability to protect officer safety by tracking the location of officers’ squad cars. But the benefits expand well beyond tracking officers’ whereabouts.
As Benjamin Lanka’s Monday story explained, the global positioning system will soon be active in the department’s 318 vehicles. The system will, among other advantages, make dispatchers’ jobs easier and more efficient.
Police Chief Rusty York said that instead of keying emergency-run information into the city’s Spillman computer system, the new tracking system will allow dispatchers to drag and drop that information directly from their computer screens. Dispatchers will know immediately which car is closest to an emergency call and how many officers are at the scene of an emergency.
“The bottom line is right now with our dispatch, we operate blind,” York said.
That will no longer be the case.
The tracking system will allow supervisors to strategically deploy officers and ensure officers are where they are needed most. The software also allows police to map crime and criminals. Police will be able to map the location of burglaries and the location of returning offenders.
Officers will also enjoy a feature that tells them the quickest route to any location and will take into consideration any traffic congestion or road construction that might otherwise obstruct their quick arrival.
“Anything we have in the records management system can be overlaid onto the system,” York said.
The City Council approved the $501,564 project in May 2008. But the project, which will integrate the tracking system with the Spillman program and the county’s GIS mapping system, is only now ready for use after the city spent $65,352 to hire an outside contractor to do work that the city was originally told the county could handle.
It’s a shame officers had to wait so long, but the system will improve officer safety and response times. The results were likely worth the wait.
