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Published on Tuesday, January 21, 2003
in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
Florida Highway Patrol troopers in South Florida are finally getting laptop computers in their cars--about eight years after local departments started installing them.
One of the features is that troopers can simply say a license plate number aloud and the computer will run a check on the tag. Right now, troopers have to wait for a break in radio traffic, call a dispatcher, ask that person to run the check, and then wait for the response.
Once troopers stop a vehicle, a swipe of the driver's license will turn up the person's driving record and any criminal history or outstanding warrants in seconds.
"The majority of cars we stop we don't run anything on because the radio is too busy," said Lt. John Bagnardi, an FHP spokesman in Broward County. "With the laptops, we will be catching more wanted people, more people with suspended licenses, and seeing more tags that don't have insurance.
"We're only two percent of the officers in the state, but we have contact with more individual people than any other agency through traffic stops," he said. "Most criminals drive cars."
So the question is: Why was FHP so far behind other departments in getting the laptops?
State Reps. Jack Seiler, D-Wilton Manors, and Matt Meadows, D-Lauderhill, who ran the House committee that finally set aside money for the computers last year, said budget constraints and lack of strong lobbying were probably factors.
"It should have been done sooner. I'm not going to make any excuses on behalf of the state of Florida," Seiler said. "As to the reasons why, part of it may have been economic, and part of the reason is, essentially, we were not as technologically advanced as we should have been. Sometimes the hardest institutions in society to move into the high-tech area are the government institutions."
Regardless of the long wait, South Florida troopers are anxiously awaiting installation of the state-of-the-art computers. Troopers in north and central Florida started getting the laptops a year ago. Only 350 of 1,760 cars still need to be outfitted, but many of them are in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
"Most of the troopers in Broward went out and purchased their own laptops," Sgt. Rob Purser said. "They saw that if I already had an intersection drawn [on the computer], it makes my job so much easier, so they went out and bought their own."
Using special law enforcement software and wireless technology, troopers will be able to write traffic tickets, issue warnings and do crash reports on the computer, hit the print button and be done. They're hoping to work out a system with the county clerks of court so they can e-mail traffic tickets instead of having to hand-deliver them each week, but that technology is not quite there yet.
Bagnardi said he thinks the laptops will ultimately help protect troopers. Reducing the amount of time they're stopped on the shoulder of South Florida's interstates will reduce the number of troopers getting crashed into by motorists who aren't paying attention, he said.
And Capt. Keith Gaston, of Jacksonville, pointed out another benefit.
"People's handwriting is not what it used to be," he said. "They don't take pride in it. If you're in an accident, you don't want a crash report you can hardly read. Having them typed, there's no doubt about what was put in there."