Palm Handhelds Help Police Officers Catch Criminals

Twenty-five officers out of the Colorado-based Loveland Police Department’s 85 officers are using palmOne handhelds powered by Voyager Systems’ Query solution and a Cingular GPRS wireless network to receive updated information in the field.

Officers enter driver’s licenses, names, or license plate numbers and are then informed in a matter of seconds if they are dealing with a criminal or stolen vehicle after the device searches through local, state, and federal criminal-justice databases.

Officers can also receive photographs of suspects or missing persons to enable quick searches across a wide distance.

Loveland officers are also using wireless networks for their laptops, which enable them to check email, file reports, and survey the locations of other officers right from their patrol cars.

Eventually, Loveland would like to incorporate Wi-Fi Internet access to improve efficiency even more.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Computer Reseller News (12/22/03) P. 49; Lingblom, Marie.