A new, $150,000 computer-aided dispatch system being implemented in Long Beach Township, which also dispatches Long Beach Island police calls for Beach Haven, Ship Bottom, Harvey Cedars and Barnegat Light, will allow the departments to communicate quicker and more effectively. The new software system, which Harvey Cedars is already using, will act as a hub for information sharing.
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| Photo via Google The new dispatching system will allow all officers to respond faster to calls. |
“They’re taking our database and our system and moving it into a bigger system, so we’re actually the basis for the new system,” said Harvey Cedars Police Chief Tom Preiser. “Basically it’ll be the whole Island except for Surf City, and at that point we’ll be able to share information. Right now we aren’t able to do that.”
Long Beach Township Police Chief Michael Bradley hopes to have the system in place by Jan. 1.
The township’s current system, which it has used for approximately eight years, is being discontinued by General Dynamics, Bradley said.
“It’s not an upgrade,” he emphasized.
The new system will provide dispatching services as well as records management, which includes various types of reports from accidents and arrests to investigations, Bradley noted.
“The computer-aided dispatch is an essential tool for law enforcement,” he said. “We’re required to retain public records, so this is a system that meets that standard for record retention as required by the state of New Jersey.”
Some interesting features of the new system include a barcode evidence tracking system as well as a messaging system that will allow officers to disseminate pertinent information in a more timely fashion. For example, if there is a hit and run in Beach Haven and the car is headed north, every department will be notified of that information, including what type of car is involved and what type of damage it has, Preiser noted.
“Whatever kind of information there is, dispatch can put that out to everybody in one shot, and we can look out for whatever we need to look out for, quicker,” he said.
A mapping system will also allow officers to plot statistics for crimes such as burglaries. This will help law enforcement locate trends and direct extra enforcement where necessary, said Preiser.
“It’s really neat. As it is now, our guys have to come in and kind of create pieces in the system on their own,” he said. “This way, dispatch will create cases, and they (officers) will just fill in some details. It’ll save a lot of work for the officers all around. It’ll be a lot less time inside doing paperwork.”
The cost of the new system, which includes the annual licensing maintenance fee for 2016, is being divided proportionately by the size of each participating town, said Bradley.
“It’s shared service, so we are sharing the cost,” he noted. “Long Beach Township is the biggest town, so we contributed the most.”
The fee (also proportionate to the size of the town) that each participating town pays Long Beach Township for its dispatch service is included in a separate contract, he added.
“It’s the same agreement we’ve been running on for years, and in some instances, decades,” Bradley said. “We’ve worked very well over the years together, and I believe it’s produced quite a bit of tax savings for our community. And it’s produced, in my opinion, high-quality dispatching services.”
Beach Haven Mayor Nancy Taggart Davis, who noted it is much cheaper for the town to be part of the joint service than to have its own dispatching center, said the borough is chipping in $24,500 for the new system. Utilizing the new system should lower their monthly dispatching fee by a couple hundred dollars, added Sherry Mason, municipal clerk.
Long Beach Township is also implementing a new digital radio system for which most of the towns involved will just need equipment reprogramming, according to Presier. Antenna sites will be set up in Barnegat Light, Holgate and at the Long Beach Township Police headquarters in Brant Beach.
“It’ll be much clearer for everybody to understand, and there won’t be any of these dead spots that we have now in certain areas, where you go to transmit on your portable radio and you can’t get in, or it’s not clear, or it’s static-y. We’re going to get rid of all that,” he said.
The system should be up and running soon, he noted.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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