SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – If you ever have been stopped by a cop and wonder what they’re doing in their police cruiser, they are likely looking up your information up on their laptop.
But sometimes, as St.. Joseph County Police Cpl. Bryce LaCosse explains, it could take a while.
“Old equipment, it could just take longer. Running computers are a little slower or the computer might not even have the capabilities to run things that you need to be ran. You have to rely on dispatch to be able to respond to you and that takes a little bit longer on the traffic stop,” Cpl. LaCosse says.
Which is why starting this week, at least 60 of the county’s police cruisers will be getting an upgrade.
“We just got new Panasonic Toughbooks. They are tablets and laptops at the same time. You have your scanner right there so you don’t have to fumble around and look for it. You got your camera right there so you also don’t have to figure out where to put it in your car. You have the GPS that is built in so no longer do we have problems with dispatch trying to figure out where we are at,” LaCosse says. “The touch screen is the nice part because instead of printing out and wasting paper to get people to sign certain things at like search warrants, we can just have them touch and sign right then and there,” LaCosse says.
Not only will the new technology allow officers to be faster and more efficient on the job, LaCosse says it will help county police crack down on more criminals.
“With our newer computers, we can run everything ourselves, and get traffic stops done a lot faster. When it comes down to cracking down on criminals, it’s more of the other technology that we’ve gotten recently that also integrates with our laptops that are helping us crack down on more criminals depending on if it’s a stolen vehicle, things of that nature,” LaCosse says.
St. Joseph County Police say they expect to have the latest laptop technology installed by the end of the week with the goal of adding them to the rest of the department by the end of the year.
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