Video Warrant System Notebook
Organizational Payback: Law enforcement personnel can videoconference with judges to request warrants, reducing travel time and administrative overhead.
Organizational Payback: Law enforcement personnel can videoconference with judges to request warrants, reducing travel time and administrative overhead. All requisite legal documents are computerized, eliminating redundancies and speeding warrants.
Citizen Advantage: Arresting officers are more quickly returned to the line of duty, thereby increasing police presence. Suspects move more quickly through the system and spend less time in holding cells.
Cost Containment: Total cost of the system, including new hardware, was $46,000, with most money going toward digitized pads and video cameras. Costs were kept low elsewhere: ISDN modems run at 128 kilobits/sec. By striking a bargain to allow software developer Federal Data Systems, Marietta, Ga., to recover its costs by reselling the finished system to other jurisdictions, Gwinnett County cut software costs significantly.
Tools: Courthouse Compaq Computer Corp. file server running Microsoft Corp. Windows NT and Sybase Inc.'s pcAnywhere; Gateway Inc. Pentium PCs with 32M of RAM; PictureTel Corp. videoconferencing; PenOp Inc. signature software and Wacom Technology Corp. digitized pads; and electronic warrant interchange software from Federal Data Systems.