Surrey Police
Company: BrandCustomer: Surrey PoliceSubmitted by: Brand CommunicationsDate: Summer 2001During 1999/2000 Surrey Police embarked on an initiative of enhancing the mobile technology available to their patrol officers out in the field. Surrey Police consists of over 2000 officers’ and covers the administrative county serving over one million residents. Surrey Police were keen to implement Mobile Computing to improve both their efficiency and customer service, but had to take into account practical issues such as for example, portability, GSM cover and application support.
Surrey Police had already established a “Knowledge and Information Management” initiative called SPIKE (Surrey Police Information and Knowledge Environment). SPIKE provides universal digital tools to all officers and staff, encouraging and enabling the creation of a virtual organisation, with the aim of delivering the right information to the right person at the right time in the right place.To begin with, an evaluation and development trial was put in place, and applications were validated over a cellular network. Surrey Police were keen to see how the devices and applications would perform in real life situations – for example on a dark rainy night on the beat – using a cellular network over which officers will be able to connect to their intranet SPIKE.At the end of the trial Surrey Police chose the Brand Apollo solution.
This consisted of the Apollo Emulator software for each officer’s portable PC and a 60 port Apollo Access Server as the communications hub between GSM and the Surrey Police LAN. Connecting over the Orange network via HSCSD operating at 28.8kbps. Apollo seamlessly extends the Surrey Police network to all mobile officers by using the unique combination of spoofing, resilient call recovery, security and compression. In addition, Brand has also provided Surrey Police with an Apollo Evolution.
This enables users connecting via PSTN or ISDN to enjoy the benefits such as PPP RAS or Apollo connectivity.The ROVER (Remote Officer and Vehicle Environment) Mobile Computing initiative allows Surrey Police officers at the scene of a crime to enter information directly into a crime report in real time, to capture information such as descriptions of stolen goods, witness statements, and descriptions of suspects. This can lead to the early arrest of criminals and recovery of goods. It also allows officers to provide victims with a crime number at the first visit, making it easier for them to trace the subsequent progress of enquiries relating to their incident.For specialist officers such as members of the Fraud Squad it has allowed them to create a true mobile office, significantly reducing the need for them to return to their physical office.
Now using Brand Mobile Computing technology they can access all of their records including email, intranet, crime management reports, applications and databases wherever they are.Phil Scutchings, Director of Information Services at Surrey Police explains: “With Mobile Computing, we hope to dramatically cut the valuable police-hours spent on administration, freeing up officers to spend more time serving the public. Access to data can be used for anything officers presently have to go back to the station to do – it means that they can be on the beat for longer without having to return to base.””In the past, Surrey Police Officers have had to fill in forms at the scene of an incident, which then had to be typed up back at the station. One advantage of using Mobile Computing is that they are able to key in reports over the network instantly to update our Crime database. Using this system, officers can also check the invaluable information stored on SPIKE such as the Firearms Register, Police National Computer, and the Voter Register to ensure they are fully informed about any people or locations they are dealing with”Surrey Police are now able to enjoy a workable solution, which delivers many significant new benefits and bottom-line cost-savings to their organisation, based around Brand’s Apollo GSM LAN access solution.
