Durabook Rugged Tablets Take on Rigors of Police Work in Newnan, Georgia

Introduction

The Newnan Police Department provides professional law enforcement services, preserves the peace, and enhances quality of life for citizens, businesses, and visitors in Newnan, Georgia. Located about 30 minutes south of Atlanta and with a population of 45,000+ over 19.1 square miles, Newnan faces challenges common to other cities in the area including pockets of the city where drug use and gangs can be found. Statistically, Newnan averages one or two murders a year.

A State Certified agency, Newnan’s police department is comprised of 96 sworn officers and 103 total employees. Captain Bradley Thompson manages the 15-20 police officers per shift working out in the field in patrol, traffic, and motorcycle units on a typical day.

Part of Captain Thompson’s job is to make sure officers have proper equipment in the patrol units, such as reliable mobile computing devices that will hold up inside the car with the affronts of day-to-day police work. The in-vehicle mobile computers must be able to support the programs and functions of field police work in bright sunlight, extremely hot temperatures, sudden, hard jostling from patrol unit maneuvers, and even the unusual, unfortunate collision.

Challenge

Captain Thompson managed the process of selecting new, rugged in-vehicle computers. Durability, battery power, anti-glare, and the ability to hold up under temperature are characteristics of the device Newnan PD was looking for. The new computers would have to work with the existing CAD and RMS systems and operate with other existing department equipment and software .

Newnan Police officers are in their cars moving through the city for their entire 12-hour shift. They receive all 9-1-1 dispatch via computer-aided dispatch (CAD) calling through the computer in their vehicle. GPS through the computer is the source for tracking for accident reports and officers run ticket printers in the cars. A computer-based Records Management System (RMS) is the platform for report writing such as incident reports and documentation, court paperwork, etc.

Camera systems are mounted in the patrol car and there are cameras located throughout the city, for example, in heavy shopping areas. Flock tag reader type cameras are on all the outer perimeter roads that come in or out of the city and supervisors can pull up the camera systems at an intersection where there is a high rate of accident calls and potentially determine the cause of accidents.

Everything is uploaded through Cradlepoint in the cars and connected through the AT&T Firstnet wireless network. Ultimately, it all feeds through the Internet service through the computers, which seamlessly support wireless connectivity.

As anyone who has tried to use a computer in a car knows, the sun’s glare can make it very difficult to read a computer screen. When responding to a call the officer will exit the vehicle to investigate a situation, leaving the computer on its mount in the car. Inside a closed squad car in summer temperatures can easily reach 120-degrees or more, enough to crack a computer screen, sap the battery, and potentially destroy the device. And, although Newnan has a generally moderate climate, it isn’t uncommon to have freezing temperatures overnight in winter, conditions that the in-vehicle device must be able to withstand.

While out on patrol sometimes an officer and police car may, unfortunately, become involved in a collision when trying to stop a motor vehicle or in other circumstances. In pursuit of a suspect fleeing in a vehicle an officer may use their patrol unit to execute a PIT maneuver, coming into contact with the suspect’s vehicle, and this can give a mounted computing device a hard jostle potentially damaging the machine.

Solution & Benefits

Captain Thompson’s intended goal from the beginning was to do the best he could to put in the best equipment for what these men and women need to get the job done out in the field. He wanted to give the officers something they would be proud to have in their car. He reached out to a trusted contact who recommended Durabook products. A lot of field testing was done by the officers themselves. Their voice and their opinion mattered a lot to Captain Thompson because, as he noted, it is the officers that sit in that car every day.

The department’s IT professionals took the Durabook U11 Rugged Tablets out of the boxes and within about an hour of uploading their programs, they were able to put the U11s in the officers’ cars to let them play with them. With an officer who has been working with the department and out in the field, there was maybe an hour learning curve of going through and seeing new buttons or things on the computer. With a new officer, part of their field training is to spend time learning the computer system and what it does and all the things that go with that computer and the technology itself.

In the daytime, it gets bright in the car but Durabook has their sunlight readable display that keeps the glare down allowing officers to see the computer screen in the car or outside in direct sunlight, which helps tremendously.

In the past, if a car was going to be in the parking lot for a little bit, Captain Bradley would tell the supervisors to pull the computers out of the car and not leave a computer sitting in a hot car. Out of curiosity, on some of Newnan’s hot days Captain Thompson left a Durabook computer sitting in the car to test it out but he found no issues with the device starting right up and doing what they’re designed for. He now calls himself “a believer”.

Newnan PD had purchased of some of a competitor’s rugged computers and had those in the cars. Captain Bradley said, “It’s a very good product. But cost wise, when we field-tested the Durabook for what it was putting out, versus the product that they were putting out there, it did not make sense to me to pay that extra price tag to get the same quality product that we got out of Durabook.”

Newnan PD field tested for roughly a month. They didn’t have any downtime with the computer memory-wise, it held up to all the programs loaded in. It maintained everything it was supposed to do out in the field and it was easy to maneuver and operate.

Captain Thompson said, “Those things really sold me as far as how our officers enjoyed working with it and on it and the effectiveness of it.”

Conclusion

The Newnan Police Department uses the U11 Rugged Tablets in the patrol cars and has two R8 Rugged Tablets on their motorcycle units. Captain Thompson said, “The smaller tablets work perfectly.”

Durabook’s sunlight readable display keeps the glare down allowing officers to see the computer screen in the car or outside in direct sunlight, which helps tremendously.

When patrol cars have been involved in accidents, Captain Thompson said, “I can say at this point, we’ve not had an instance where the Durabook has ever been damaged.”

Newnan PD recently helped find an elderly person that had been missing for over five hours. In the case of a missing, vulnerable senior or a child, computers in the cars are extremely important in that officers can more quickly get on a track. In the past, an officer would be looking at a map of the city spread out on the hood of the car to try to figure out where to go. But now, once on site, the officer pulls the tablet out of the car and pulls up the map system integrated in Newnan’s CAD system. It will show every single street and blocking it out to start a perimeter is much faster and easier. In this recent case, the Newnan police were assisting another agency and the area was not known to Newnan’s canine handling officer. Captain Thompson said that “Using the computer and GPS, within five minutes the dog was tracking and the endangered person had been located. When there is a person that is vulnerable and missing, the computer decreases the amount of time that person is exposed to risk.”

He continued, ‘On the reverse side of that, if we have somebody who has escaped custody or is fleeing from the police, again, we can utilize the same resource to get a perimeter up in an area quick. If we know a direction of where they’re headed, supervisors can position officers in an area where we can try to stop them, or get a hold of the situation, as quickly as possible and put an end to it.”