Amesbury police fight crime with laptops

Police officers on patrol in Amesbury, Mass., are looking for more than speeding motorists. They are typing license plate numbers of passing vehicles into laptop computers in search of drivers with expired licenses, registration and insurance violations and outstanding criminal warrants.

When a quick scan of local and national law enforcement databases uncovers a violation, it flashes the information on officers’ computer screens so they can take immediate action.

This is the new face of crime-fighting in Amesbury, a city with 24 full-time police officers and a fluctuating population of about 15,000 people.

Instead of relying on two-way radio calls to busy dispatchers for limited information on a driver, officers can now tap into a wireless computer network to get a complete motor vehicle and criminal history on their laptops in seconds.

The department credits this new computer system with helping it double its warrant arrests and catch more drivers with expired licenses and registrations and insurance violations.

The system also arms officers with detailed information about potentially dangerous situations and gives them a secure way of communicating out of the earshot of clever criminals eavesdropping with police radio scanners.

In the past, patrol officers’ inquiries were limited to simple insurance and registration checks that took seemingly endless minutes because they went through dispatchers who had multiple requests coming in simultaneously.

Now, using a mobile information system called Packet-Cluster Patrol from Marlborough, Mass.-based Cerulean Technology, Amesbury police can search state and federal crime databases on their own to more quickly learn who owns a car, if the owner’s license is expired and if he or she has prior arrests, traffic violations and outstanding warrants.

Amesbury’s eight patrol cars have Compaq laptop computers running the mobile information system over a wireless network.After receiving $43,000 from the town to completely outfit four cars in 1994, town officials appropriated $25,000 more in July 1995 to equip the remaining cars with the laptops after seeing how efficient and safe they made officers’ jobs. Since then, the system has more than paid for itself as officers find more people with violations and issue fines.

The police department’s main objective with this technology is keeping uninsured and unregistered vehicles off the street (on its last trip to the state registry of motor vehicles, the department turned in more than 100 revoked license plates) and finding drivers who have warrants against them and suspended licenses.

During a regular shift, police officers are running an average of 100 license plates through their laptop computers and stopping 12 drivers to 15 drivers for violations.

“This technology allows us to see what’s really out on the streets. We know there are stolen cars, weapons and drugs out there, but we haven’t been able to effectively find them,” says Amesbury Officer Tom Hanshaw. “Now that we can pull up more information on drivers based on their license plate number, we can find the people committing crimes who might otherwise have just driven by us.”

For example, on Super Bowl Sunday, an officer typed the plate number of a suspicious looking car into his laptop, discovered the car had been stolen in November from Boston’s Logan Airport and arrested all four occupants.

Besides helping officers identify more violations, the mobile information system is helping make potentially dangerous situations safer by arming officers with important details before they get out of their cruisers.

If a license plate search reports the car is stolen or the driver has an outstanding warrant, officers know they should approach the driver with caution or call for backup.

Early one morning, for example, an Amesbury officer saw a parked car with two different license plates. When he pulled up the license information on his laptop, he saw one of the plates was stolen.

This immediately alerted him to approach the driver cautiously, which turned out to be the right call.

While the driver had nothing to do with the stolen license plate, he was arrested after the officer found a dozen knives and several ice picks on him.

Officers also use the system to find Amesbury residents who have outstanding warrants. While Amesbury has a long list of “wanted” citizens, tracking them down is difficult because the city has a very mobile population. Since the system is tied into national databases, officers can enter a person’s name and birth date to see if a forwarding address is on file. If the person moved to another town, officers can notify the town’s police that the offender is living there so they can make the arrest.

Once an officer enters an inquiry into the system, the query is sent to the database at police headquarters, then on to the Law Enforcement Agency Processing System computer in Chelsea, the Registry of Motor Vehicles Computer in Boston and the National Criminal Information Computer in Washington, D.C.

In seconds, information gathered from those locations appears on the officer’s screen, showing everything from the owner’s date of birth, type of car and license status, to speeding and history and outstanding warrants. If there is a warrant against the owner, the system immediately sets off an alarm in police headquarters, alerting the dispatcher to send backup. “We can now stop more cars and get the information we need faster,” Hanshaw says. “If a car looks suspicious — if it has a missing plate decal or a plate held on by wire — we can run the plate number on our own.

“This wasn’t practical before we had this technology because we would have to constantly call in to the dispatcher for the information, taking that person away from more urgent calls,” he says. In addition to real-time access to motor vehicle and warrant information, Amesbury officers use their mobile information systems for electronic messaging between police headquarters and mobile units.

Since messages travel silently over a network, rather than over open radio waves, outsiders can’t eavesdrop. This stealth capability is particularly critical when dealing with clever burglars who choose their next hit based on where patrol cars are located.

Indeed, before Amesbury implemented this technology, the town was hit with a well-organized string of burglaries from southern New Hampshire to Connecticut.

Police scanners alerted criminals to the location of patrolling officers, allowing them to plan their break-ins so they would not get caught. With the e-mail capabilities, Amesbury police can now respond to calls using the element of surprise.