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Service information:
Established in 1980, serves 30k and fastest growing population in Wayne
County; 41 sworn and 14 civilian; handle approx 38k calls for service a
year.
What makes Brownstown Police Department
unique?
Three non-contiguous territories; this requires us to work closely with
seven surrounding communities that share computer resources. More below...
Software programs used?
Aegis Records Management, Mobile and CAD products; Ortivus North America’s
AVeL-Base, AVeL-RadioGATE and AVeL-MobiCAD. I have found Ortivus NA’s
products to be superior. Comparing the Ortivus mobile product to the
competition is like comparing a Cadillac to a Vega – for the price, the
Ortivus NA AVeL-MobiCAD is clearly a better deal. The support we receive
from Ortivus North America has also been excellent – most times within a
24-hour turn-around.
What advice would you offer other Police Departments?
Consortiums save costs and time associated with managing digital
information. The group that is now known as the Michigan Shared Information
Network Consortium (SINC) initially started investigating the options of
joining with neighboring communities back in 1999 when all the Y2K issues
were a big concern. While it’s not all that uncommon for counties to explore
this type of alliance, it is somewhat uncommon for communities to implement.
SINC was one of the first organized partnerships formed in the United States
that includes municipal law enforcement agencies (7) without any county
involvement. We joined to form a consortium to make better use of our
resources (i.e. instead of each community purchasing their own server, we
all share one), as well as many other benefits that we have found, such as:
• Easy access to more information; by sharing data, each agency in SINC has
direct access to all member agency criminal records and other valuable
information (i.e. crime specifics, notification of potentially dangerous
people or circumstances, makes of vehicles, addresses, etc.)
• Shared databases ultimately help prevent crime, as more information is
available to search for suspect names, vehicles, confiscated property,
criminal mug shots, etc.
• A unique funding source that the 33rd District Court implemented to help
pay for the SINC technology needs, called the “Technology Fund”, is financed
through fines levied on convicted criminals versus hidden taxes.
• Pooled resources eases the burden on individual agencies of the
ever-increasing technology needs
Next Step?
The next shared resource that I’d like to see implemented in the
Michigan SINC is AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location). With knowledge of where
all units are in an area – whether a Brownstown Police unit or one of the
other SINC agencies, we can put the closest car to a call for quicker
responses. It also provides an increased safety factor for our officers
because the closest backup is better known.
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