Stimulus boosting officers’ technology

Federal stimulus money will make law enforcement officers a little more mobile in the next few months.

A $379,998 grant from the federal Recovery Act Rural Law Enforcement Assistance program will help provide mobile terminals in patrol cars in early 2010.

It’s part of a program that began about three years ago to update the records management system for law enforcement agencies in Franklin County, Sheriff Craig Davis said.

The system lets those agencies — including the sheriff’s department and the Ottawa and Wellsville police departments — work together to share records and improve technology and services.

“It just enhances law enforcement in all areas of the county,” Davis said.

Mobile terminals will let deputies and officers file reports from their patrol cars. That means officers don’t have to come back to the station between calls and saves time and fuel costs, Davis said.

It also means officers can do more “preventive patrol,” Davis said. Officers might be able to discourage criminals, leading to fewer incidents in the long term, he said.

The entire records management project, which costs about $600,000, has been paid for with a combination of grant money obtained by both the sheriff’s department and Ottawa Police Department, as well as money seized from a drug bust in December 2006. Very little money for the system came from taxpayers, Davis said.