The Manchester Township Police maintains numerous computer systems that assist and protect officers in their daily duties. The Computer Section in manned by a full time Director of Data Processing, and is overseen by the Support Services Bureau Lieutenant. The Computer Section is responsible for maintaining and repairing all of the servers, mainframes, desktops and laptop computers utilized by the Division.
Police officers are very dependent on the computer systems they use in their everyday tasks. Manchester Township Police maintains a Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD) that manages calls and stores histories of police calls for service dating as far back as 1987. The CAD System and Records Management System runs 24 hours a day and is critical to the safety of both the public and to the members of the Police Division. The system is run on an IBM I-Series computer which was installed as an upgrade in April of 2012. The CAD and Crimes System will be upgraded in July of 2012 to Sungard HTE’s Naviline System. This upgrade makes major changes to the user interface and allows more information to be at the officer’s fingertips.
The Division also maintains a mobile computing solution in many of the marked patrol units. Patrol PC gives officers access to crime and motor vehicle information and is paired with the ICOP mobile video recording equipment (MVR). ICOP MVR’s are in every marked patrol unit and records audio and video both inside and outside the patrol car.
The most recent acquisition of the Police Division is a Federal Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR). This high tech system was installed on a marked patrol unit in May of 2012. The ALPR system automatically reads license plates that drive past the patrol unit on any one of three cameras mounted underneath the overhead emergency lights on the marked patrol unit. The ALPR simultaneously takes a digital image of and runs the license plate through the national databases. Any time the ALPR reads a license plate that is expired, is suspended, is wanted, or is stolen it alerts the police officer in the patrol car to the information. The patrol officer can then stop the car and take the most appropriate legal action.