With all of the dispatchers settled in at the new Joint Emergency Communications Center, the Iowa City police now has time to focus on another project — switching computer systems.
Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine described some of the department’s software and radio equipment as old and rotted. The department is undergoing major changes as it switches from a slow, text-only, record-management system to an easily accessible, department-wide program.
The move is part of a countywide goal to bring all of the agencies within Johnson County together on one network and radio system. Soon, Iowa City patrol officers will be able to communicate directly with other departments in Johnson County, as well as have access to their case files.
The computer system — which will update both the computer-aided dispatch and record-management systems — has been used by the Coralville police, North Liberty police, and Johnson County Sheriff’s Office for several years, and it is long overdue for the Iowa City police, Hargadine said.
From the record-management side of the project, there was much improvement needed, he said.
“We were scanning handwritten documents, and that never did sit well with me,” he said, “Because in 20 years, if you go to print off an old record, you don’t want a handwritten report, you want it typed into the system.”
Coralville Police Chief Barry Bedford said his department has been successfully using the software for four years and noted that the North Liberty police have been using it even longer.
Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, who also has four years of experience with the software, said having all of the departments in the county on one database will be of great assistance to the agencies.
The Iowa City police has been trying to set the project up for more than five years.
Bedford said Johnson County will see many positives from the software.
“The sharing of information interdepartmentally is beneficial for officers on the street,” he said, “Expanding that past an individual agency to four or five agencies will help us do our job better and safer.”
The total countywide cost for this summer’s projects is roughly $22 million, Hargadine said. That covers creating the new dispatch center, the offices of emergency management, along with the radio and computer systems, which are only a small chunk of the costs. The price tag is paid for by an emergency-management fund and the state, he said.
The system — which Hargadine expects to be working by October — will help him keep closer tabs on the more ordinary cases that do not go straight to investigation.
“We can share the master names and the master business files, and that is going to be a pretty big tool,” he said. “[The transition] has been bumpy, but I think a year from now, when we have everything working like it is supposed to, we will definitely be solving some crimes.”