A wireless

computer system used in Fayetteville's police cars is enhancing officer

safety and productivity at the same time.

The in-car

computer system, which has been in use for several months now, allows

officers wireless access to criminal databases. This means officers can

run a check on an individual's drivers license, see if there are any warrants

out for his/her arrest and determine quickly whether a vehicle has been

stolen.

The catch is

the speed with which this activity takes place: from the time the officer

sends his request from the patrol car, a reply generally comes back within

10 seconds.

And if a "hit"

comes back from that search, the computer can wirelesly alert all other

patrol vehicles logged on to the system so they can respond to the scene

for backup if necessary, said Lt. Jeff Harris.

"It gives

us a tremendous advantage," Harris said.

Before the

system was in place, Fayetteville officers depended on 911 operators to

run warrant and tag checks for them ... and those checks could take several

minutes or more depending on whether the system is backed up.

Now the time

lag is down to 10 seconds or less, partly due to the state's computer

database giving a higher priority to requests from patrol cars, Harris

noted.

"It's

an extreme time-saving element," said Maj. Steve Ledbetter.

Another advantage

of the in-car computers is that officers can communicate with messages

similar to e-mail, right from the seat of their patrol vehicles. Also,

administrative messages may be sent to all cars from the base station

at police headquarters.

The computers

also are helping officers stay in the field to do their paperwork such

as incident and accident reports, Ledbetter said. Doing so also saves

time because the computer program for filing accident reports streamlines

the previously time-consuming process of drawing diagrams of the accident,

Harris said.

And when the

reports are complete, the officers submit them to a mainframe computer

at police headquarters via the wireless network ... without leaving their

patrol vehicles.

This has improved

the turnaround time on reports; previously employees in the records department

had to type in the officers' handwritten reports so they could be filed

with the state, Ledbetter said.

Now, many reports

can be available to the public the same day, whereas it used to take up

to three days for them to be ready, Ledbetter said. It also frees up the

three full-time records employees for other tasks, he said.

The system,

which cost over $400,000, is expandable to the point that other nearby

police agencies can "tap in" to use Fayetteville's system, Ledbetter

said. The theory is that those agencies would pay a fee to Fayetteville

for the service, he said.

The system

also is expandable in a variety of ways. One upgrade would allow all dispatching

to be done via the in-car computer system, with 911 operators typing messages

that would be beamed wirelessly to the appropriate patrol car.

Another upgrade

would allow each patrol vehicle to be linked to a Global Positioning Satellite

system so its location can be constantly monitored.

Getting the

system up and running was not an easy task. After studying the various

systems available beginning in 1995, the department finally made a recommendation

to the City Council for funding in 1999. Even once all patrol cars had

the system installed, there were plenty of bugs to be worked out, Ledbetter

said.

The system

used by Fayetteville, which can't be decoded even if the signals were

intercepted, uses several different providers including Southern Link

for the transmission system, Cerulean software, and Data 911 for hardware.