As the Fayetteville

Police Department leaps into the electronic information age, its officers

will rely less on the police radio and more on computers for communications.

Each patrol

car in the department will soon be fitted with a new computer to allow

officers to perform tag checks instantly. Officers will also be able to

send messages to other cars much like e-mail.

Checking tags

with the computers will eliminate the current process of radioing dispatch

with a vehicle's tag number and waiting several minutes for the results.

Instead, the information will be relayed in a matter of seconds, said

Maj. Steve Ledbetter of the Fayetteville Police Department.

"It takes

three to four minutes on a good day" to run a tag check for a traffic

stop, Ledbetter explained. And that's if the computer system isn't bogged

down or the dispatcher isn't busy with another call.

The shorter

wait also enhances the officer's safety, since the computer will warn

if the car is stolen and whether the driver is wanted by another agency

or "is considered armed and dangerous," Ledbetter said.

If the driver

is wanted, the computer will send a message to alert all other police

cars who are on patrol at the time, Ledbetter added.

Though the

computers can't run full background checks, they will be able to process

driver's license information, Ledbetter said.

Each patrol

car will be outfitted with a computer screen that allows information to

be entered by the touch of a finger. A keyboard will also be handy to

type incident reports and accident reports.

Those reports,

when completed, will be beamed over the airwaves to the supervisor's computer

for approval before the report is sent to the department's records office.

That will eliminate the current three-day wait for reports to be completed,

Ledbetter said.

"These

cars aren't just cars they're the patrol officer's office," Ledbetter

said. "We're looking to have every tool available to help them do

their job in a more efficient manner."

The computerized

reports will also eliminate the need to input the handwritten reports

into a computer, which is currently being done by the department's administrative

staff, Ledbetter said.

"We're

trying to expedite the process," he said.

The system

also allows for using more technology in the near future. The computers

could be used to track the exact locations of all patrol cars, for instance.

They could also be hooked up to the cars' video cameras to "capture"

mug shots of each person that is placed under arrest, Ledbetter said.

The total cost

of putting computers in each patrol car is $434,000, which also includes

the airtime that will be used by the 31-car fleet. Ledbetter, who studied

the in-car computer systems of other departments around the nation, said

Fayetteville got a good deal with its system.

"This

is not just something for today," he explained. "We built it

for expansion so we won't have to make major changes for quite a number

of years."