Ebr Agencies On Cutting Edge

East Baton Rouge Parish in Louisiana is testing a new technology that gives law enforcement officers access to law enforcement databases from different agencies.

Officers making traffic stops will be able to enter license plate numbers and get nearly instantaneous information about the car and the owner, and even a driver’s license photo, as well as warnings if the registered owner is wanted on arrest warrants or has prior arrests for violent crimes.

Sheriff’s Chief Criminal Deputy Col. Mike Barnett says that Baton Rouge is the first law enforcement agency anywhere to link completely disparate databases; they get data from local, state, and federal databases, including the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.

A previous effort in that direction was predicated on a “data warehouse” model, or one container for all agencies, but this made agencies lose control over their data and was hard to keep current.

Thinkstream’s Barry Bellue proposed a system that would let computers simultaneously access each database and integrate the results, and has offered to donate the software to each Louisiana law enforcement agency. If the technology catches on, the company could become highly profitable by selling it to other agencies.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Baton Rouge Advocate (01/02/03) P. 1A; Moore, Melissa .