Mobile police increase time on the beat

Police in Staffordshire are aiming to increase the amount of time officers spend out on the streets by using rugged GPRS-enabled laptops to access crime reporting systems.

By cutting the amount of time police spend returning to the station to fill out crime reports the force has set a target of allowing officers to spend 10 per cent more of their time on the beat.

So far 60 officers have been equipped with Panasonic Toughbooks, which use a closed Orange GPRS network and Citrix thin client technology to access the Police National Computer to do vehicle checks or suspect profiles.

None of the data is stored on the devices and police have a user ID, passcode and Pin number along with a system generated passcode from RSA's two-factor SecureID authentication technology.

Ian De Soyza, project manager at Staffordshire Police, said all officers on shift will be equipped with mobile access to applications by the end of the year and all 2,000 officers will have access by the end of 2004.

He said: "The immediate target is to increase visibility by 10 per cent through crime reporting. Our primary objective is to increase the number of police officers visible on patrol. That is driving what applications we are to deploying for mobile access."

Although the notebooks are bigger than PDAs, De Soyza said officers involved in trials had rejected the smaller devices.

"Ours did try the iPaq-type PDA devices and were handing them back. The battery life is not brilliant and they are temperamental. They also needed a keyboard. If you are chasing a car at 90mph at three in the morning, then trying to use a stylus is a challenge," he said.

GPRS has also proved fast enough for data transmission with PNC vehicle checks taking one to two seconds and crime profiles three to four seconds, according to De Soyza.

"It is very usable desktop-type LAN speeds," he said.

The project has also not broken the force's IT budget. Although De Soyza would not reveal how much was spent on the Panasonic devices, he said the use of existing web-browser interfaces to back-end systems for a smaller notebook screen had cost under £25,000 compared to an estimated £400,000 to start from scratch on the applications.