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Computers for police in Largo long overdue

Police officers need to be patient folk to survive their challenging jobs, but this was ridiculous: Largo patrol officers had to wait years longer than those in other major Pinellas jurisdictions to get what is now considered a basic law enforcement tool: computers in their cruisers.

Year after year, the Police Department had asked the city manager and City Commission for the funding to install in-car computers.

In addition, several law enforcement incidents had demonstrated the need for the computers for officer safety, if no other reason.

Yet the funding just wasn't approved, and Largo officers continued to have to do their job lacking this basic tool that other communities had found a way to provide to their officers.

In 2004, when it looked like the budget request again was in danger of being shelved, Chief Lester Aradi made a strong, personal appeal to commissioners to save the funding.

The department's waiting ended the week before Christmas, when a computer was installed and turned on in each of the department's 90 vehicles. "For 20 years, I've been told we'll be getting cutting-edge technology," said Sgt. Mark Young. "It's finally Christmas Day."

The $3.5-million system performs a host of tasks for officers who are on patrol.

They can get immediate access to criminal histories, driving records and outstanding warrants on individuals. They can find out quickly if a car is stolen by punching in the license plate number.

In the past, officers had to radio a dispatcher to retrieve such information for them. The dispatcher had to look it up in the course of handling other dispatcher duties. Officers often had to wait until the dispatcher could get to their request.

Now, officers will be able to do a more thorough job on patrol because such data will be available to them so quickly and easily.

Officer safety will be improved by the new system too, because it uses tracking devices to keep tabs on cruisers and allows all officers on patrol to see each other's location by checking the computer screen. Officers also can see what kinds of incidents are occurring citywide, without having to depend on radio communications, which can sometimes be garbled.

The city's investment in the computer system and hardware is quite small compared with the value the system is certain to deliver in the years ahead.

[Last modified January 4, 2007, 21:51:51]