Thread: New 'smart alerts' offer high-tech help for police

REGION: New 'smart alerts' offer high-tech help for police

By SARAH GORDON - sgordon@nctimes.com |
Friday, May 15, 2009 8:07 PM PDT ∞

SAN DIEGO COUNTY ---- A Carlsbad police detective is going home for the day when he gets a text message telling him that Chula Vista police have just pulled over the suspect in his robbery case.

A district attorney investigator in San Diego hasn't been able to locate a witness until a text message lets her know the person has just reported a crime at an Oceanside address.

Local police and law enforcement officials could be sharing information using such real-time alerts to help them find suspects, witnesses and victims and to keep tabs on gang members, parolees and dangerous criminals.

The Automated Regional Justice Information Systems, or ARJIS, a county agency that helps its 75-member law enforcement agencies share and access crime data through a computer interface, plans to roll out an "Officer Notification and Smart Alerting System" over the next few months, agency director Pam Scanlon said.

"We have a current officer notification system, but this is more real-time so officers can take action immediately when they get an alert," Scanlon said.

The system allows officers to enter the names and information of people they are looking for and get an automatic alert on their cell phone or other electronic device any time another officer in the region has contact with that person, Scanlon said.

Officers also can enter addresses and license plate numbers and get instant alerts when that license plate has been spotted or activity is reported at the entered address, she said

After getting a text message, officers must log on to their e-mail accounts to get more details about the "hit," Scanlon said.

All North County police and deputies, and agents from federal and state agencies, access ARJIS daily, mostly from car-mounted or desktop computers.

The Smart Alerting system should be a more successful investigative and tracking tool than a "be on the lookout" bulletin or a "Wanted" poster, said Dale Stockton, a retired Carlsbad Police captain who helped design the system and detailed its features for public safety leaders on Friday.

"I'd like to be able to tell you that a (be on the lookout) that comes into Carlsbad from the FBI gets a lot of attention," but, he said, it's impossible for police to remember and look out for other agency's suspects at all times.

But with Smart Alerting, if a Carlsbad officer pulls over an FBI's suspect, the agent would be notified by cell phone within seconds and the officer would get a message on his squad car computer telling him the suspect is wanted.

Stockton said the system will be powerful, because any system user can create an entry.

Now, when an officer runs a name, he or she learns only whether that person has an arrest warrant in a national database.

ARJIS will alert the officer if any officer in the region is looking for the person, for almost any reason.

Sgt. Steve Sutt, a 17-year veteran of the Carlsbad Police Department who saw a demonstration of the new technology three months ago, said that officers and detectives use ARJIS's current version of an officer notification system every day.

But with the current version, officers usually wait until they are at work to log in and check whether there has been a "hit" on any of the names, license plates or places they have entered.

That means suspects may be long gone before the detectives looking for them find out they have been spotted.

"Maybe I don't get the information until the person I'm looking for has been cited and released, and I won't find out until I get into work and check," Sutt said.

The updated Smart Alerting has been developed with the help of a $350,000 grant from the National Institutes of Justice, Scanlon said.

Contact staff writer Sarah Gordon at 760-740-3517.

http://nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/15/ ... 7d3ab1.txt

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I hope this new system tell every officer if I.C.E. is looking for them.