Police tech

==Open source in the police department==
===Interesting articles===
* Red Hat Magazine article from April 2005.
:Notes. Okay to bounce between operating systems. Consider old 8086 machines and dot-matrix printers as potential time-saving tools. Penguin Sleuthkit is a forensic tool. It is important to use tools which protect the integrity of the scene. There can be no question of tampering.
* Congressman Tim Murphy gets $ for police car technology from April 2006
==Details==
=== Wider Use Of Technology 'Could Free Up Police Time' ===
Better use of technology could cut bureaucracy and free up valuable police time, according to the final report of HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Ronnie Flanagan's 'Review of policing'.
The potential benefits to everyday policing provided by new technologies are considerable, the review finds. A trial by one force of handheld PDAs replacing police officers' paper notebooks found they saved an estimated 51 minutes per shift by reducing the need for officers to duplicate information. A trial of Body Worn Cameras (BWC) by another force found they allowed officers to spend on average 22% less time on paperwork and more time on patrol - up to 50
minutes per officer per shift.
The report says effective use of these technologies must be to reduce bureaucracy
and not simply add to it - the footage from BWCs ought to be submitted instead
of a written report and not in addition to it, for example.
Greater centralisation in the implementation of new technologies and IT
systems is needed to generate economies of scale, the study finds. The UK has 43
police forces and without a change "we will waste millions of pounds on 43
different but similar IT solutions," the report said. The report estimates the cost of
providing each officer with mobile IT as being between 3,000 and 6,500
pounds over five years.
Currently each force uses its own database system with few links across
forces.
One of the consequences of this is that up to 70% of data has to be entered
into
police systems more than once; this amount of duplication is a major source
of
inefficiency and forces would benefit from standardisation, the review says.
The report estimates that the recommendations could save as much as seven
million hours that could be reallocated to front-line police work.
* http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news/flanagan-report
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has already announced further piloting of
handheld
devices by police and scrapping of the form used to record 'Stop and Account'
incidents in favour of digital recording using the Airwave police radio
system.
category:technology