AG 1994 01 18 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Sheriff's Department Currently the Communications Division of the Sheriff's Department provides 24 hours service for the EMS, County Fire Dept., County First Responders, County Rescue, Harrisburg Rescue, County Dive Team, and provides a 2~-hour public contact for the Animal Control and Social Service. The Communications Center has separate procedures for each agency and type of call received. The current Computer Aided Dispatch System has become outdated, because of the increase in demand for services from the public, and limited personnel and equipment for the current call load. The current CAD system is very difficult to make changes in the programming, which limits the years of effective use of the system. During major or multiple incidents which usually involve two or more agencies, and several 911 calls, officers in the center become overloaded in a matter of seconds, which leaves little or no time to look up paper documents when the officer is unsure of the correct procedure or he/she needs to ascertain the location of the incident on the map, which means they have to leave their radio console to attempt this. This means valuable time can be lost on duplicating calls and looking for additional information for responding emergency units. The current 911 system cannot be totally integrated into the CAD system. Each 911 call has to be manually typed into the CAD system causing a valuable loss of time. The current CAD system will not automatically fax needed information to the emergency response units nor will it display fire plans, and maps. Another problem is the increase of Criminal Investigation Reports, Warrants, Civil Processes, Gun permits, Jail records, Photographs (Mug Shots), and statistical reporting to the State Bureau of Investigation. On our current system all these records are located in different areas, and not in a central repository. This makes it sometimes very hard to find information in a timely manner, for example, it is currently possible to incarcerate a new prisoner in the County Jail who has outstanding warrants or Civil Processes on file, but never be served with those papers because the jailer may not be familiar with the charges. This problem is not unique to the jail, it occurs in each division of the Sheriff's Dept. Because of the current record system there is no way to cross index the current filing system with the other programs, and there is not enough time to do search on each data base on every person we come in contact with.