The Southold Town police department is working to learn the ropes of new public safety technology software, Police Chief Martin Flatley said today.
“We are going through some definite growing pains as we are in the first stage of a completely new operating system for our department,” Flatley said.
As of May 12, the police department “went live” with a new system purchased from IMPACT, which the police department uses for its records management system as well as its computer-aided dispatching.
The Southold Town board adopted a resolution on February 10 allocating funds for the Impact software, including one year of maintenance, for $74,039.
Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell said the upgrades are past due. “An investment that further enhances our emergency/police response communication capabilities is a good investment.” Russell said the plan was to upgrade the current two servers supporting the current command center, anyway, for a cost of approximately $70,000. The total cost of the new project will be around $100,000, but the cost difference will be offset by $12,000 the town will receive from Suffolk County for maintaining its own dispatch functions. “This is a good investment that comes at a time when an investment needed to be made. Money well spent,” he said.
Training is ongoing, Flatley said. “We had to bring every member of the department in to be trained on the new system, as it affects every aspect of the work we do,” Flatley said. “Currently, we are still in the beginning stages of becoming comfortable with this system, but we are confident that it will improve the new technology our department sought when looking for a newer operating system.”
Officers said this week that the learning curve meant some delays in normal procedural tasks as staffers got up to speed on the system.
IMPACT, a Farmindale-based company, offers a “technology suite for police and public safety entities,” according to a release announcing that Southold Town had chosen the system.
The new system includes IMPACT computer-aided dispatch with mapping, records management, and mobile technology, including field reporting and automatic vehicle locator ability.
The project includes converting legacy data from the HTE system previously used and also includes interfaces to the NYS E-Justice system, Livescan for digital fingerprinting, TRACs for ticket processing and E911, the release states.
The new system will allow the town to communicate with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office, enabling them to see records related to defendants and garner other data expeditiously. Flatley said the new system streamlines “the amount of information an officer has access to while on patrol. The new system also integrates a mapping system making it easier to locate callers and even will provide navigation to the caller’s house if needed.”
Southold is the eleventh municipality to embrace the system in Suffolk County; others include the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, the village police departments of Southampton, Shelter Island, Amityville, Northport, Lloyd Harbor, and Asharoken, as well as SUNY Farmingdale and Suffolk County Community College campuses and the Town of Islip’s public safety department.
Dennis Labriola, President and CEO of IMPACT said he was “very pleased and honored to have been selected by the police department and the town’s IT group to supply public safety technology software. “It says ‘not only does IMPACT meet the requirements of the PD, but we do so in a fashion that meets the IT group’s requirements’. What I am most excited about, however, is the expansion of our data sharing network in Suffolk County and throughout the region; our ability to providing more information when it is needed, where it is needed.”
