San Diego police walk streets with gun, badge, PDA

Department designs wireless crime-fighting tools

Monday, September 24, 2007

The idea came while watching his 15-year-old son use a laptop to talk to
other players during an interactive video game.

Assistant Police Chief William Maheu wondered why his officers couldn't use
their cell phones to listen to the police radio?

His epiphany would eventually put specially programmed PDAs in the hands of
San Diego police officers. It would also land the department on the wireless
map nationally.

The department took the top spot this year in Computerworld magazine's
ranking of private and public businesses using technology to mobilize field
workers.

"No one is pushing the wireless applications like we are anywhere in the
country," Maheu said. "We are literally on the cutting edge of technology."

For officers who don't have access to in-car computers, the personal digital
assistants are the latest addition to a growing list of technical
enhancements that some cops can't imagine living without.

The handheld computers, which double as cell phones, are used by officers on
foot, motorcycles and horseback. The devices can verify the identity of
suspects who say they do not to have ID or give false names. Officers can
send and receive still images, including mug shots and driver's license
photos, and listen to radio calls.

Within the next six months, the PDAs should be able to receive live video
from police and fire helicopters.

They have become a model for some agencies.

It all started three years ago when Maheu found his teenage son in his
living room playing a video game with people from opposite corners of the
globe. He was using Voice over IP software, which allowed him to talk to the
other players, all while instant messaging and running other applications.
He was doing all of this on a wireless connection from a laptop his parents
bought him.

Wireless companies told Maheu that he couldn't merge police radios with cell
phones, so he put his Internet Technology team to the test. The team created
software that did the job.

"I knew we could do it," Maheu said. "I kept telling my tech guys, 'If my
kid can do this stuff, we should be able to.' "

Last year, the Police Department became one of the first in the country to
turn PDAs into crime-fighting tools.

The devices - Sprint PocketPCs and Palm Treos - cost the department $300
apiece. The Verizon wireless connection runs $60 a month per subscriber. The
department has 400 PDAs, all of which are in use.

One is assigned to Officer Roberto Delgadillo, a member of the Mounted
Enforcement Unit.

"It's a good tool," said Delgadillo, whose unit patrols Balboa Park, the
beaches and other parts of San Diego by horseback. "It really helps us
quickly identify people."

Before the PDAs, Delgadillo said he would routinely have to release people
after writing them tickets for littering or drug use or being drunk in
public.

Numerous tickets went unpaid because the suspect used a fake name after
claiming not to have identification. Delgadillo requested background
checks - radioing dispatch or a nearby squad car - but help was tough to
find sometimes.

"Many times, if I really didn't have much to go on other than what the
person was saying, I would have to let them go," he said. "Most of the time
when people are lying about their name they're wanted for a more serious
crime, and you end up arresting them for that because of the PDA."

Maheu said a motorcycle officer once used his new PDA to catch an ID thief.

The officer pulled over a driver who said she didn't have her license or
registration. She did give him a name, but when he typed it into his PDA it
was clear from the driver's license photo that popped up that the woman
wasn't who she said she was.

Maheu said the woman was stealing identities, which police learned after
searching her laptop. She was charged with impersonating another person, a
felony.

Sgt. John Stricklin, a 25-year veteran, remembers life without PDAs, and
even in-car computers and cell phones.

Back then, officers used pen, paper and a radio. They lugged around stacks
of blank reports, each color coded, and matching Wite-out to correct
mistakes. Green was for traffic accidents, tan for crime reports, blue for
missing children, and so on.

"There was green-out and tan-out, blue-out and yellow-out," said Stricklin,
50. "We were never allowed to use pencil. And when the report got too heavy
because of all the Wite-out, we would have to start over."

Although the department has used desktop computers for years, life for beat
cops wouldn't get any easier until cell phones and in-car computers were
introduced in the 1990s.

"Cell phones have really helped us," Stricklin said. "That, and, of course,
e-mail and texting. It's nice to get that real-time information, especially
on a crime in progress. And there's some things that really don't belong on
a radio for tactical purposes."

The program that put laptops in squad cars began 11 years ago. The Panasonic
Toughbooks let officers perform tasks simultaneously, and templates modeled
after Microsoft Word documents replaced the color-coded reports.

Reports are filed electronically, often from the car, to a records clerk,
who forwards it to a detective if necessary. A process that took days now
takes hours.

"I can't even imagine doing it by hand," said patrol officer Tom Paul, 34,
who has worked for the department for about three years.

To help prepare Paul for a system failure, an occasional occurrence, his
training officer shut down his laptop and forced him to use his radio, a
Thomas Guide map book, a pen and a notebook. Paul said the process was
excruciating.

With the laptop, details of a police call appear on an officer's screen
almost as soon as the dispatcher radios the information to the field.

A map link gives directions, and new cars are equipped with GPS, so officers
can see their vehicle moving across the screen. Another recent software
addition lets officers send text messages and locate backup.

"You can just look at the screen, hit the map button if you need it, and
it's all right at your fingertips," Paul said.

Officer Sandi Lehan said most of the younger officers "don't know what to do
without their laptops and PDAs." Lehan led the team who developed the
software for the PDAs, which officers also can use to access work e-mail.

"That's huge, because they can get all their updates and information in the
field," said Lehan, the department's special projects manager for new
technology. "The motor(cycle) guys are very old school, but they're using
these PDAs all the time."

The Carlsbad Police Department is close to using PDAs modeled after San
Diego's, Carlsbad Chief Tom Zoll said.

"Other departments are starting to share in the success they've had with
that technology," said Zoll, who is also chairman of the county regional
communication systems board.

He said most police departments in the county are ahead of the technology
curve, primarily because officials from separate agencies are sharing ideas.

"There are many, many more things that will be put to use in addition to the
PDAs," Zoll said.

Locally and across the country, law enforcement agencies have worked to
improve their use of technology after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A wireless network designed for police and other emergency responders is
being built in New York City, and one is set up in the nation's capital. In
both places, first responders had difficultly communicating during the
terrorist attacks.

In San Diego, there isn't enough money for the city to build a wireless
network, which is why the Police Department contracts with Verizon.

Meanwhile, Officer Lehan is busy tweaking the PDAs, and Maheu is swapping
ideas with Washington, D.C.'s IT team.

As Washington's chief technology officer, Robert LeGrande oversaw the design
of the wireless network there. He used words like "phenomenal" and "rare"
when discussing San Diego's PDAs.

"I would say it's the future for public safety," LeGrande said.

"It's leveraging what's already there for our citizens," he said. "It's
exactly what we should be doing, which is providing our first responders
with the best available communications technologies."