Indiana Firm Comes To The Rescue Of Police

Unable to find squad-car computers on the market that matched officers’ specifications–waterproof, with touch-screens that would not wash out in the day time or be overly bright at night, and with backlit and detachable keyboards–the police department in Fort Wayne, Ind., turned to OEM Micro Solutions of Novi, Mich., to build a custom computer system for officers’ needs.

Now, Fort Wayne has 500 squad cards with OEM Micro Solutions’ “mobile tactical computers,” with 64 more to be installed soon, and several towns in Michigan are also interested in the company’s computers.

Already, three of the computers in use in Fort Wayne have survived crashes that totaled the cars they were installed in, with two of the computers coming away undamaged and the third needing only a new hard drive.

OEM Micro Solutions CEO David Downs is hoping that the computers will become integral parts of many more emergency vehicles. Downs’ staff usually designs and builds systems specifically for each of its customers, so the mobile tactical computer are the only product that OEM Micro Solutions is marketing to multiple potential customers.

“We try to make it feature-rich and expandable through options,” said Downs, adding, “everybody has a little bit different flavor they want in their vehicle.”

Michigan’s Huron Township is another jurisdiction that has already installed the computers, which generally cost between $4,500 and $5,500 apiece.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Detroit News (11/07/04); Bunkley, Nick .