Upper Merion Township Police Department Improves Service and Safety with a Cisco Wireless Network

Article Summary
The Upper Merion Police Department (UMPD), which serves Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, replaced its antiquated record management system (RMS) with a new, state-of-the-art system, and deployed a wireless network that allows officers to access the new system directly from their patrol cars. This article describes how the UMPD:

• Deployed Cisco Aironet® wireless bridges and access points to extend the existing Cisco high-speed network and enable officers on patrol to file reports and access information in real-time
• Incorporated video surveillance into the network to increase eyes on the street
• Streamlined administration while maximizing police presence and improving officer safety

Background
Upper Merion Township is located in southeastern Pennsylvania, about 20 miles from Philadelphia. The township has approximately 30,000 residents, hosts more than 50,000 jobs, and offers over 9.5 million square feet of office space.   

Daily shoppers and sightseers increase the population of Upper Merion Township to more than 100,000, as the township is home to both the huge King of Prussia shopping mall and most of the 3600-acre Valley Forge National Historical Park—one of the nation's most venerated historic landmarks. The township's largest employer is defense contractor Lockheed-Martin, a company that brings both economic benefits and the occasional protesters to the area.    

In today's atmosphere of crime prevention and heightened national security, the Upper Merion Police Department (UMPD) has found that advanced communications technologies, coupled with old-fashioned dedicated police work, enables its officers and support personnel to be both more efficient and more effective.   

Challenge
Lieutenant Thomas Nolan of UMPD is a 19-year veteran of the police department, a SWAT team leader, and the person in charge of UMPD's Auxiliary Services division, which is responsible for the department's IT and communications systems.    

When Nolan took over Auxiliary Services, he inherited an aging records management system (RMS) that was extremely difficult to use. A simple database search, for example, required the help of an IT specialist. Lt. Nolan's vision was to implement a new RMS that would be more effective, and that could be accessed by on-duty officers, thus creating a mobile office in the patrol car. This would allow officers to create reports electronically, update the database in real time, and download information from the RMS directly in the field.   

An RMS is a vital resource for collecting and accessing law enforcement records, such as incident data, vehicle information, and digital images. Nolan and UMPD IT Director Scott Widenhofer chose a powerful yet user-friendly system from Cody Computer Services that offered an optional mobile/field reporting system (MFRS).    

As a seasoned law enforcement official, Nolan could see the enormous potential of using networking technology to connect patrol cars directly to the new RMS at headquarters. "The new RMS would be easier to use, but without some type of network connectivity, officers would still have to return to the station to use it," explains Nolan. "Prior to the new RMS, officers had to write out reports by hand and submit them. The reports then had to be typed and entered into the system by administrative clerks."   

Widenhofer suggested that the department also find a way to add video access to the patrol cars as well, to enable supervisors to monitor scenes remotely and allow officers to monitor their colleagues' activities and provide backup support when necessary.    

Nolan was very excited by this use of technology for law enforcement. "Other police departments had implemented pieces of what we wanted to do but we had yet to see any other department put it all together," he explains. But putting it all together required that the UMPD find a vendor that could supply both the equipment and the technical expertise to make Nolan's vision a reality.   

Solution
With the right networking solution in place—with the required bandwidth, accessibility, and security —Nolan and Widenhofer knew that UMPD would be able to make information available to officers in the field to help fight crime more effectively. This would increase the presence of officers on the streets without requiring the department to add more officers on staff.    

The first networking technology the two men investigated was Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD, a package offered for a monthly subscription fee by the service provider. But they quickly determined that the technology didn't have the bandwidth to handle images. In addition, Nolan felt that the department would be better served by incurring the one-time cost of purchasing its infrastructure than by dealing with recurring costs that monthly a subscription would entail.    

"We decided that purchasing equipment based on the wireless 802.11b standard was a better option for us," he adds. "It would give us the connectivity and performance we needed, and allow us to manage our costs better."    

Nolan's team put together a request for proposals (RFP) and sent it to nine companies. To the team's surprise, only two vendors responded and only one of these addressed all of the requirements in the RFP. "Cisco Systems® was the only vendor that met all of our requirements, and its proposal was not only comprehensive but very user-friendly. The responding Cisco® team explained things in lay terms, and took the time to make us comfortable with the technology. That was extremely important to us."   

Integral Wireless Solution handled the deployment of UMPD's wireless network together and worked with the police department to integrate the video component into the system. VNX Solutions, another Cisco partner, was responsible for the deployment of the IP surveillance portion of the network.    

Cisco Aironet® 350 Series clients provide connectivity between UMPD headquarters and the police cars. Cisco Aironet 1200 Series 801.11b-based wireless access points are installed around the township. A Cisco Aironet1410 802.11a wireless bridge provides a 54-Mps link between the Marquis Building, the township's tallest building, and the Upper Merion Police Department Headquarters building the security of the wireless network is provided by Cisco.   

The patrol cars will be equipped with video cameras provided by Coban Technologies, a Cisco Partner company. Once installed, supervisors will be able to use the network to access the in-car video cameras and observe situations on the street, and officers can access the cameras of other patrol cars in case of emergencies. The township also owns several traffic cameras set up at major intersections to monitor traffic flow, which it was able to convert to IP. "We can now access these cameras from headquarters or from the patrol cars in the field," Nolan explains.   

Another technological advantage the system provided was one that Nolan had anticipated since he began his career in law enforcement. "We've always been frustrated by the lack of interoperability between different police and fire department radio systems," he explains. "We can't talk to our own fire department or neighboring county officers because we're on different radio frequencies. When Montgomery County switched to 800-MHz radio systems to solve that problem, Delaware County and Chester County purchased different brands of equipment, so we still couldn't talk to each other."    

At a Cisco conference, Nolan and Widenhofer were introduced to the new Cisco land-mobile radio (LMR) interoperability technology. "With the Cisco IP-based LMR interoperability solution, a dispatcher can patch two different departments together with a couple of keystrokes. We can talk directly to Chester County without going through two dispatchers. It's an incredible breakthrough," says Nolan.   

UMPD has tested LMR interoperability with its own fire department as well as the police department of neighboring Tredyffrin Township. "We've had a couple of serious accidents right on our shared border and we've both responded to the call," says Nolan. "With the new LMR interoperability, we'll be able to talk directly to each other and coordinate our efforts more efficiently."   

The Cisco LMR deployment consists of a combination of Cisco LMR gateways, Cisco Call Manager software, Cisco IP phones, and application software. A Cisco 3745 Router located at the Upper Merion Township municipal building converts the multivendor analog radio interfaces with push-to-talk (PTT) signaling to IP multicast technology for interoperability among the various agency base stations.    

Results
Sixteen UMPD patrol vehicles are now equipped with Panasonic laptops, and all 62 patrol officers in the field are entering their reports on the MFRS. They also have Internet connectivity in the field. "At first we wondered if we needed to put the Internet in the patrol cars," Nolan says. "But the officers are really finding it useful. One officer was assisting an older couple whose car had broken down," he explains. The couple lacked some critical information they needed to have the car towed, but the officer was able to retrieve it for them. "He did a Web search right from his laptop, found the information, and had a tow truck sent out."   

Patrol officers can also access the State of Pennsylvania's new online accident reporting system from the field, which allows them to file accident reports quickly and easily. "No one else in the state is doing this. We're the first department to be able to enter accident reports right from the patrol car," says the State of Pennsylvania.   

In addition, officers in the field can access the new RMS to view mug shots of suspects, or photos of missing persons, so that they can be on the lookout immediately. In the past, patrol officers had to return to the station house to get this information, which generally meant they wouldn't see it until the end of their shifts.    

Officer safety has also improved as a result of the new network. Supervisors use video cameras mounted in the police cars to remotely monitor potentially volatile situations and manage multiple scenes simultaneously. Officers are able to monitor their fellow officers' situations by watching in-car cameras, which helps them determine when a backup response is necessary.

Officers can also access the traffic video cameras at major intersections to locate suspects. "One of the advantages of living in a bustling community is that suspects get stuck in traffic just like the rest of us," says Nolan. "If we get a call that a suspect vehicle has been spotted, we can access the intersection cameras and see if we can locate the vehicle."    

Back at headquarters, clerical staff have seen their workload drop significantly, now that they don't have to spend hours each day typing up handwritten reports and entering them into the RMS. "By creating an online mobile office in the patrol cars, officers can write their reports while they're on patrol, and the minute they upload a report, it's available for everyone to access," Nolan explains. "We've been able to redeploy clerical staff to other jobs, such as formulating statistical data patterns in criminal activity, or recording the frequency of types of calls for service that we didn't have the resources to study before."    

The wireless network has proved highly reliable in all types of weather. "We were concerned about the signal strength during the summer, when all the trees were in full leaf, but we have not had any problems," Nolan says. "Even in the middle of a blizzard, when everything was covered in ice, the signal was unaffected."   

Nolan is very pleased with his experience working with Cisco. "If I've ever had a concern or a question, someone from Cisco got back to me right away with an answer. As a law enforcement professional, that's the kind of responsiveness and support I value."   

Next Steps
Currently the wireless network covers about 35 percent of the township. To reach its goal of 85-percent coverage, UMPD is talking with local industries about donating access points. They are also talking with administrators at both the King of Prussia mall and the local high school about connecting existing video surveillance systems to the Cisco network.    

In the future, UMPD says they will be deploying the Cisco LMR solution to allow interoperability between the neighboring townships and county first responders. Additionally, the department is considering the deployment of an IP telephony system that would allow officers to place and receive calls directly through their laptops rather than using cell phones or going back to the station to make calls. "This is another way that we can improve communications and protect our community," Nolan says.   

February 2004