Patrolman Anthony Lane sits in his patrol car with one of the laptop computers known as mobile data terminals, which the Vicksburg Police Department is using to receive on-screen dispatch and criminal history data from E-911.(The Vicksburg Post/C. TODD SHERMAN)

[04/22/02]Computers installed in some Vicksburg Police cars are communicating with E-911 to receive on-screen dispatch and criminal-history data, but not to enter and send reports.

The laptop computers, bracket-mounted to the right of the driver’s side in about 10 cars, work like text pagers, city technology manager Bill Ford said. Called mobile data terminals, they are in two-way radio communication over a special frequency with E-911 computers in the Warren County Courthouse, Ford said.

“When the user of the MDT is dispatched, the call information comes up in the car,” Ford said. “The officer can respond with keystrokes: received,’ en route’ and on scene.'”

Patrolman Michael Demeranville is a main police department liaison with the city’s technology department and uses an MDT in his patrol car. “When it’s fully operational I seldom talk on the radio,” he said.

From the MDTs, officers can also get information from the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, which keeps national criminal history, vehicle ownership and other information.

Demeranville said the system has demonstrated at least one of its main purposes. A former police officer who found himself with a suspect at the Welcome Center on Washington Street and “was able to get a hit’ that (the suspect) was wanted and arrested him on the spot,” he said.

Officers still mainly request NCIC checks from department staffers over a special “records” radio channel, but that process involves several steps and is subject to bottlenecking, Demeranville said.

To run such checks officers must at least switch channels, request the information and receive it over the radio. How quickly department staff is able to retrieve and relay the information from about a few seconds to 2 to 3 minutes can depend on immediate staff availability and the number and length of other calls coming in. And, before leaving and after returning to the dispatch channel to run the checks, officers on patrol are also supposed to notify the dispatch center that they are doing so, Demeranville said.

MDTs, on the other hand, typically retrieve the information in 3 to 5 seconds, Demeranville said.

And using the system keeps the separate channel for voice communication free for what might be more-important use at any given time, said Patrolman Anthony Lane, another MDT user.

Lane also stressed the importance of being able to visually scan criminal-history records of vehicles or addresses he might be approaching. “We know what we’re getting into before we get there,” he said, adding that knowing that a driver or an address has a history of criminal activity does not prejudice his treatment of a person or situation but can serve as a welcome alert.

The system’s infrastructure, purchased about two years ago, cost about $100,000, Ford said, and each MDT cost about an additional $2,500. The current infrastructure will handle about 70 MDTs, he said.

Original plans were for more officers to have MDTS, and for officers to use them to enter and transmit reports. Police Chief Tommy Moffett, however, said that if he were considering requesting new high-tech equipment for police cars now he would give priority to video cameras above MDTs.

Officers have used the report-entry functions less than expected for reasons that are “not technical but procedural,” Ford said. “Sometimes high-tech is not the best way to handle things,” he said.

“All the bugs have been worked out but nobody’s been through training yet,” Demeranville said. He added that officers’ “down time” for entering reports is about the same using the terminals as when using paper, but that using the terminals for data entry could reduce the amount of work required of the department’s four data-entry clerks.