Jackson (MS) Police get squad car laptops
The Jackson (Mississippi) Police Department has equipped 70 of its 387 patrol cars with laptop computers, and plans to install computers in another 121 cars in the next two months, using more than $2 million in federal grant funds. Officers can now run their own records checks, making it safer to approach stopped vehicles. Using dispatchers to run license plate checks often took up to 15 minutes. The laptops come with Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) technology, which allows patrol cars to be tracked anywhere in the city.
Source: "Mississippi police departments going high-tech" by Thyrie Bland; The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS) April 6, 2002
Kentucky's traffic accident database
Kentucky State Police are using its $3.5 million Collision Report Analysis for Safer Highways (CRASH) information system to improve the analysis of traffic collision data in order to better allocate resources to address pinpointed problems. CRASH includes all traffic accident reports submitted by local or state police, and was designed for timely and accurate sharing of data free of charge to any law enforcement agency in Kentucky. Since CRASH was implemented in January 2000 there has been a 50 percent drop in accidents across the state.
Source: "Accident data helps police focus on traffic trouble spots;" The Associated Press State & Local Wire, March 24, 2002
Morro Bay (CA) Police buy LiveScan system
The Morro Bay (California) Police Department has purchased a new $26,000 LiveScan fingerprinting ID system using a grant from the state. The equipment will allow the department to get much faster results for fingerprints submitted for background checks and criminal investigations. The system is connected to the California Department of Justice , reducing the time spent waiting for results from months to less than a day.
Source: "New Tool for MBPD" by Neil Farrell, The Sun Bulletin; The San Luis Obispo (CA) Tribune, March 27, 2002, Pg. 14
3 Cold hits made by Virginia's DNA database
Virginia Beach (Virginia) Police Department recently received word of cold hit DNA matches linking one suspect to the 1992 rape of a 14-year-old girl in a school yard and two previously unconnected rapes in 1995. The suspect was in the state database because of a conviction for burglary, drug distribution and indecent liberties. He will be tried separately for each new case.
Source: "Suspect Found in Decade-Old Rape Case; Beach Police Discover DNA Match in State File; Man Also Faces Charges in Two Cases From '90s" by Jon Frank; The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) April 4, 2002, Pg. B3
DNA cold hit made on 1996 Salt Lake City rape case
In March 2000, as the four-year statute of limitations was set to expire for the unsolved 1996 rape of a University of Utah student, Salt Lake County prosecutors filed three felony charges against a John Doe DNA profile, and placed the profile in the FBI’s Combined DNA index system (CODIS). It was the first time Utah law enforcement filed charges against a DNA sample, but the optimistic action was rewarded when a CODIS cold hit was recently made on a man arrested by police in Illinois for four unrelated rapes there.
Source: "DNA Linked to Utah Rape; Illinois suspect to be extradited after his felony trial" by Kevin Cantera; The Salt Lake (UT) Tribune, March 28, 2002, Pg. B8
Honolulu Police upgrade communications system
The Honolulu (Hawaii) Police Department has completed the $40 million upgrade of its police communication system from analog to digital. Dead spots and other glitches existed after the $19.7 million communications upgrade was completed in 1998, but the department has upgraded the system with new equipment. Police officers will now each be outfitted with hand-held radios in addition to those in their vehicles.
Source: "Honolulu police upgrade to all-digital radio system;" The Associated Press State & Local Wire, April 10, 2002
