Features

Software Glitches Frustrate Police Data Hunters

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday November 18, 2003

Not sure how many burglaries occurred on your block last month? Neither are the police. 

A $700,000 hi-tech dispatch program purchased three years ago to bring Berkeley Police into the 20th century has proven less effective than carbon paper. 

Named HTE after its manufacturer, HTE Incorporated, the system promised to zip information from dispatch to Berkeley’s records management system so police could instantly map crimes at various city locations. 

But the system never worked, so the BPD must manage with its 13-year-old Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, which Capt. Doug Hambleton said prevents officers from generating accurate up-to-date crime reports. 

CAD data is based on information received in the initial call to police, not the final police report, so if a burglary call turns out to be just only a case of trespassing, CAD still shows burglary—and any police report compiled from it would reflect the wrong offense. 

Police must then manually input the correct data into the records system, which Hambleton said means a lag time of several weeks to months. 

“Our information is not 100 percent accurate and we can’t make it 100 percent accurate,” he said. 

Among a multitude of problems, Berkeley Director of Information Technology Chris Mead said that HTE couldn’t support several dispatchers simultaneously. 

“This system works well for a smaller police department, but couldn’t handle what we needed it to do,” he said. 

Former Chief Dash Butler opted for the program—which was paid for entirely by a federal grant—but Mead said that in retrospect the department needed a more sophisticated model. 

When Butler made the purchase, the BPD had its own technology department, and did not need to consult with city technology staff while shopping for systems. The city changed that arrangement last year, placing both police and fire technical personnel under the city auspices. 

The city is currently negotiating with HTE Incorporated on a refund for the system. 

HTE did not respond to the Planet’s telephone calls. 

In the meantime, city officials are drafting federal grant requests to help pay for a new system Mead estimates will cost between $1.2 and $1.5 million. 

Time is of the essence, Mead said, because the supplier of their current system, Tiburon Inc., has given notice that it intends to stop supporting the product after 2006. 

Further hampering the BPD’s ability to dispense data is the fact that department brass have yet to assign anyone to update the crime data on its website. That project was abandoned in September when previous Public Information Officer Mary Kusmiss was promoted to patrol sergeant. Her replacement Officer Kevin Schofield said the task will “probably fall on me, but we’re working on that.”