Countywide RMS lets cops share info quickly from their cars
Cops should be on the same page soon in Greenwood County.
Plans to approve a uniform, countywide digital records management system will make it easier for officers to share information with one another at a moment’s notice.
Currently, officers of the Greenwood Police Department and Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office use the same RMS, which allows them to see each others’ calls and know who is responding to which emergency.
“Ninety Six PD, Ware Shoals PD — they all have their own RMS, so we can’t see their reports,” said Jonathan Link, Greenwood Police Department public information officer.
RMS software allows for officers to have a computer in their patrol cars that receive information directly from 911 dispatchers, and to share information about the calls they’re on with other officers on patrol. The location, status and call information of each 911 call is available to officers on their screen, and the information they put into the system is visible by other officers using the same system.
Recently, Greenwood County Council unanimously voted to allow the county to contract with Caliber Public Safety for a new, countywide RMS. The contract will unify the jail, sheriff’s office, Greenwood police department, Ware Shoals and Ninety Six under the same system, for a total cost of $540,000. The price tag came up less than half of the more than $1.3 million allocated for the project.
“Not only is it going to save the county $750,000 from what we budgeted,” Link said, “but one of the big things we’ve fought with is that company A makes the dispatch software, while company B makes the RMS software.”
Currently, the software used to transfer date from dispatchers to officers in the field differs from the software officers use in their patrol vehicles, Link said. The issue is that the two systems aren’t perfectly aligned, so some information from one software system doesn’t transmit easily to the other system. To solve for that, the company that makes the RMS system designed a third piece of software — an interface that allows the two systems to communicate with one another.
Under the countywide agreement with Caliber, the dispatch and RMS systems will transfer data seamlessly, Link said. The software is also cloud based, meaning the data itself isn’t stored on the officers’ computers or on a server at the law enforcement agency’s offices. Instead, the data is stored on a server managed by Caliber, and officers log into the system online.
Link said the Caliber system follows FBI and federal standards for data security.
“I’m 100% on board,” said Bryan Louis, Ware Shoals police chief. “It interlocks us in with the other agencies.”
When Greenwood County deputies respond to a 911 call near Ware Shoals, Ware Shoals officers would be able to see the details of that call under a unified system. Now, with separate systems, officers have to call in to dispatch to get information from other agencies — a countywide, uniform RMS instead puts that information in the officers’ patrol cars.
Ninety Six Police Chief Chris Porter said what he’s seen of the system seems to work smoothly, and he’s excited about the information-sharing capabilities under a uniform system. If Ninety Six officers arrest someone in a burglary case, they can easily check to see if similar burglaries have been reported to other agencies on the same system, to see whether a suspect is connected to cases being investigated by other agencies.
“It’ll cut down on a lot of on-air time and radio traffic,” he said. “I think it’ll make the community a lot safer. We’ve been talking about this for years, but didn’t have the up-front cash to do it.”
The move to a countywide RMS stems from a project approved under the 2016 Capital Project Sales Tax.
“Law enforcement is an intelligence-driven business, and we rely on intel,” Link said. “Having all the major players in Greenwood County on the same system is going to make sharing that information a lot easier.”
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Mar 24, 2021
By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com