NYPD gets 41,000 tablets, handhelds for officers
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The $160 million initiative will upgrade the NYPD’s mobile platform, allowing the department to outfit up to 6,000 police cars with rugged tablets and provide 35,000 handheld devices for police officers.
The New York City last week announced a NYPD Mobility Initiative that will provide the city’s police officers with up to 41,000 mobile devices, including tablet computers and handheld devices.
This $160 million project will upgrade the NYPD’s mobile technology platform and fund it over the next three years, allowing the department to outfit up to 6,000 police cars with rugged tablet computers, as well as provide 35,000 handheld devices for police officers.
The new NYPD mobility technology will also feature a mobile version of the Domain Awareness System pioneered by NYPD that aggregates and analyzes existing public safety data in real time to provide investigators a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity.
The devices will give officers mobile access to the majority of NYPD databases so they can conduct record checks from the field. In addition, officers will be able to directly receive information pertaining to 911 emergency calls. And detectives will be tied into the Department’s Enterprise Case Management System, allowing them to review and update case information from the field.
The NYPD plans to add fingerprint scanning to support in-field identity checks and support for GPS applications as well as the ability for officers to enter reports in the field and to process other data without returning to the precinct.
The initiative is being funded from criminal asset forfeitures secured by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office through recent sanctions cases, the city said. The NYPD Mobility Initiative is the first major allocation of these funds, and the District Attorney’s Office intends to make additional funding announcements in the near future focusing on projects in sex crimes, cybercrime, mental health, public housing and domestic violence.
The initiative also calls for funding data plans, additional servers and storage to support the delivery of applications to mobile devices, as well as network enhancements including security, capacity, resiliency, and redundancy of the interface between the telecommunications network and the NYPD network. Application development in the areas of data collection and retrieval, seamless integration with the NYPD’s case management system and tech support, will also be included, according to the announcement.
In addition to critical upgrades to the NYPD’s in-field law enforcement capabilities, the city expects the platform to have a major impact on the criminal justice system by providing real-time data and increasing the accuracy and efficiency of information sharing between the police department, local prosecutors and other law enforcement agencies.
“This technology funding will significantly help to advance the NYPD’s move into 21st Century policing. The timely access to critical information is key to effective policing and enhanced public safety. This initiative will clearly result in more efficient crime-fighting, counter-terrorism measures, and service to the people of New York City,” said Police Commissioner William J. Bratton.
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