Jasper PD is seeking cooperation between all county departments to modernize police records

Monday afternoon a large contingent of the entire county’s law enforcement community met at the Pfaffenwieller room at Jasper City Hall. The meeting was called by Jasper Police Chief Doug Tarvin to discuss the use of the county’s Law Enforcement Continuing Education Fund to pay for an update to reporting systems for every law enforcement department in Dubois County.

The fund was established to help pay for continuing education and equipment for law enforcement personnel. It is funded through the collection of fines, but according to Tarvin the fund has been accumulating since its inception in 1986 and the county could potentially lose the funds to the state if they are not allocated locally.

According to the assistant county auditor Sandy Morton the local agencies that issue citations can collect the money from these fines after the fines have been paid. The agency must provide the report of the citation or ticket and the auditor can then release the collected funds to the police agency. Since the fund’s inception not all the municipalities have applied for their allocated funds from the program and the county can only provide the collected funds from the past seven years, so an amount has accumulated that will never be claimed locally.

The use of the funds is dependent upon a court order and Tarvin is recommending the local municipal departments and Sheriff’s Department working together would assist in the court process.

The new reporting system being considered is managed and developed by InterAct™ Public Safety, a provider of public safety incident response and management software. Currently InterAct has over 800 clients nationwide on the system including the Indiana State Police. They have also provided the county with the updates to the Computer Aided Dispatch system.

Huntingburg Police Department implemented the mobile reporting system within its department a few years ago after Chief Ron Drew and others had conducted an extensive survey into the different systems available. Huntingburg is the only department in the county using the mobile technology at this time but they did not take part in the Report Management System aspect that Tarvin is also recommending.

According to Drew, the mobile reporting system saves time for officers in the field in reporting traffic accidents and minor incidents. “What would take half an hour to complete now takes ten minutes,” He explained.

The mobile systems allow officers to scan driver’s licenses, automatically filling in data on reports and forms like traffic citations, and then the officer can print the forms on the scene. The extension of this system is the data management for the police department.

For police departments that spend a lot of time in data collection and retrieval the automatic system available from InterAct is a tremendous asset in community policing and investigations. According to John Stransky, InterAct Regional Vice President, if all of the departments in the county were on the system, information between departments could be shared almost instantaneously.

In a scenario posed an officer could respond to a scene of a crime, retrieve a photo of the suspect, scan it and upload it through a smart phone, tablet pc, or laptop and all of the law enforcement agencies in the county could access that suspects picture and operating mode and any other identifying characteristics.

Sheriff Donnie Lampert has been working towards a better informational management system for his department through the procurement of federal grants with little to no success and believes in the advantage it will give local law enforcement. “If I put up a report about a stolen chainsaw with a broken red handle, every department will have that information.” He explained. “When another department is investigating an incident, they’ll have that information either ahead of time or after the report is filed.”

The cost of the implementation of the system is approximately $120,000 but InterAct has a grant available for the mobile portion of the system that lowers the overall cost down to approximately $112,000. If the continuing education money is allocated for this, a balance of approximately $8000 remains.

The mayors and town managers at the meeting discussed this balance and County Council President Greg Kendall stated he felt that the system was so important for the entire county that he would recommend the county pay the balance until an agreement could be reached in regards to what each entity would pay.

Jasper Mayor Bill Schmitt stated that he would actually recommend that Jasper pay half of the remaining balance and the county the other half. He stated he felt this was the correct course of action as the City of Jasper had the greatest amount to gain from the implementation of the program. “I don’t think it is fair to lay the burden of the initial cost of this program on the smaller towns in the county.” He said.

After implementing the new system each department would be responsible for a recurring yearly fee. The fee is price locked for ten years and several departments are already paying for a similar service. The funds would just be reallocated for the InterAct service.