Features

The city of Post Falls, Idaho, has been experiencing a population explosion–nearly three times as many people are living there today compared with 10 years ago. Virtually every part of the city government has faced challenges keeping up with the growth, and the police department has been no exception, as budget increases have not been sufficient for the Post Falls Police Department (PFPD) to hire new police officers.

“We’ve gone from a small town to being the third largest city in Idaho,” says Lt. Scott Haug of PFPD. “This growth taxes our ability to provide an acceptable level of service. We have been asking for more manpower, but the city can’t provide that because all other areas of the city are growing, too. We’ve looked to technology to bridge that gap.”

Haug identified three areas within the department where technology could improve efficiency. First, many of the on-duty officers were spending much of their time at the police station filling out reports rather than being in the field. Also, when emergency calls came into the department, the dispatch operator would stay on the phone with the caller, keying all of the pertinent information into the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system before dispatching officers to the scene by relaying the dispatch information over the radio to the officer.

Haug realized that if officers had access to the CAD system in their vehicles, they could travel to the scene as soon as the information was entered into the system. Additionally, the dispatcher could immediately take the next phone call instead of spending time on the radio relaying the information to officers in the field.

Finally, when officers made stops, they had to call license plate and driver’s license number information over the land mobile radio system back to the dispatcher. The dispatcher would look the information up on the computer and relay the information back to the officer over the radio. This process could be streamlined if officers were given direct access to the databases they needed right in their vehicle.

Applications not available
Haug was wary, however, of the ability of wireless technologies to extend the PFPD network to vehicles, after a failed attempt in the late 1990s to connect the vehicles to the rest of the network using code-division multiple access (CDMA) technology. This allowed the transfer of text messages, but it did not integrate well into the existing network applications in use because they were designed for 10- or 100-Mbps Ethernet networks.

When the U.S. Department of Justice rolled out the Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Plan, which funded public safety projects, Haug saw an opportunity to obtain additional funding to help improve the department’s efficiency. After investigating various options, including 900 MHz, 802.11b and CDMA technologies, he finally chose ORiNOCO 802.11-based outdoor routers, now rebranded under the Proxim Tsunami MP.11 name, to link together Proxim 802.11b access points and provide connectivity back to the PFPD.

The wireless network capacity was comparable to that of the wired network at the police headquarters. This meant that when the applications were running on a laptop in a patrol car, they would behave similarly to the way that they worked on the Ethernet network at the station.

After finalizing on a solution, Haug had to convince the mayor and the COPS program directors of his plan. “I set up a single cell of coverage and demonstrated to COPS and the mayor how, while sitting in a patrol car parked in the city, an officer could do everything he would normally do at his desk in the police station,” says Haug. “Not only was my proposal to roll out a wireless network accepted by COPS for $160k in funding, the city pitched in another $40k, enabling me to complete the rollout of the city-wide public safety network.”

cameras for public safety
Once the network was installed, Haug found another application enabled by the wireless network: using Ethernet-connected cameras placed at crime-prone areas throughout the city and connected to the network via Proxim radios, officers could view live video feeds of key areas in the city at any time from their vehicle.

As PFPD rolled out the network, it encountered two problems. First, part of the city had a hilly area with trees that presented an obstacle for the patrol cars receiving a wireless signal. This was overcome by placing several base station radios on a mountain-top tower that had a view of the rest of the city. These radios were backhauled via a wireless link to the police station, and access point radios placed throughout the city were connected to the mountain base station by separate backhaul radios.

APs and backhaul radios were installed in electrical enclosures to protect them from weather, and the enclosures were mounted on buildings, telephone poles, traffic lights and water towers, which had line of site to the roads where patrol cars traveled. Each patrol car was equipped with a laptop computer with an ORiNOCO 802.11b card. A roof-mounted antenna connected to the 802.11b card in the patrol car further improved range.

The second problem surfaced when patrol cars momentarily went outside of a coverage area. Some applications would crash or log the officer out of the application. As a result, software from Netmotion was added to the network, positioned between the network layer and the application layer. When the network layer is disconnected, the software “tricks” the application layer into thinking that it is still connected to the network.

The police department has realized several benefits with the wireless system, including: more officers in the field and faster response times. Overall, the benefits in these key areas equal the benefit that would come to the department through hiring five additional full time officers–a 17% improvement in efficiency.

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