"The mobility of our criminals is an increasing concern," says Jason Moen, deputy chief of the Auburn (Maine) Police Department. "We have had criminals go on multi-county crime sprees, which can be difficult for an officer to track."

   A CAD and RMS service company took this issue under its wing when it decided to look into whether small- and medium-sized agencies could link these applications across agencies at a low cost.

   That's how Information Management Corp. came up with its answer: Cross Agency Data Sharing.

   Information Management Corp. (IMC) had successfully delivered CAD, RMS and related solutions to law enforcement for years. Now it's new application, Cross Agency Data Sharing. Cross Agency connects IMC customers, their case reports and master names lists using each member department's existing IMC databases. This way, rather than rely on a centralized data repository, agencies can implement the solution with low overhead.

   "A cross-agency search can track a suspect to different parts of the state if that suspect has had police contact," Moen says.

   Cross Agency Data Sharing also allows real-time access to information on whether subjects had contact with other agencies. Officers can see immediately when a name check shows previous offenses, warrants or arrests involving violence or weapons. This is crucial to officer safety, which Mark Pacheco, chief of police in Dartmouth, Mass., says drove the initial decision to try to get agencies integrated. "In one jurisdiction, an officer made a traffic stop on a speeding vehicle," he says. "The officer queried the Cross Agency system and found out the offender was wanted in a neighboring jurisdiction on a domestic violence charge, which had been brought less than an hour previously. He never would've known that otherwise, and he was able to call for backup and make the arrest."

How it works

   Cross Agency operates on a "hub and spoke" system. One department, usually the one with the best connection, hosts the server or the "hub." The others connect as spokes and do not connect directly to each other.

   The "best connection" is a matter of what Leo Hisoire, IMC director of engineering and interim general manager, calls "a solid network infrastructure with quality hardware and good bandwidth." This includes a variety of network types: The state criminal justice information services (CJIS) network, or virtual private networks (VPN) built upon secure broadband cable TV or DSL, or frame relay of at least 56K in speed. (Smaller agencies' VPNs on wireless modem connections can also be used.)