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Jeffco computer
link designed
to speed crime-solving
By Ann Schrader
12/30/05
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A software system soon to be rolled out in
Jefferson County will help police get tougher on crime.
Called COPLINK, the secure intranet-based program takes pieces of
information, analyzes them and provides direction and leads for
investigative work.
"People don't see it as being Arvada or Broomfield as they cross
jurisdictional lines to commit crimes," said Arvada Deputy Police Chief
Don Wick, but information about their misdeeds hasn't always been
communicated between crime fighters.
"This gives us the ability to connect things," said Wick, head of the
law enforcement information- sharing consortium.
While officials say crime analysts in various police departments already
communicate well, the computer program does it faster and puts together
bits of details that might have been overlooked, network experts say.
For example, in the recent rash of police impersonation cases,
individual law enforcement agencies could have fed partial license plate
information, vehicle color or make, and the person's basic description
into COPLINK.
Wick said the result could have been a list of people who own a certain
type of vehicle.
"The individual might have been contacted in Lakewood for something
innocuous, while a larger crime was committed in Broomfield," Wick said.
"Each city has a little piece of the pie that we would not have known
about."
Each agency controls the data that are shared and retains the
information.
Officials in Arapahoe, Boulder and Douglas counties have called
Jefferson County to learn about the consortium.
"Everybody's watching us," said Dean Davis, support systems manager for
the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, which will be the network's hub.
"What we have been doing manually for a long time will be
electronically."
Hardware is being built, and the electronic record-keeping systems used
by Jefferson County, Arvada, Lakewood and Westminster are being merged.
The system is supported through various federal law enforcement grants.
Davis said the information "highway" was completed in early December.
After brief training sessions in January, the four agencies will go
live. Three smaller agencies - Golden, Wheat Ridge and Broomfield - will
join in the late spring.
While the Jefferson County consortium is the first in the state, COPLINK
has clients in more than 130 jurisdictions across the nation, including
in Alaska; in part of California; near Tampa Bay, Fla.; in Des Moines,
Iowa; and in Phoenix.
COPLINK was developed by Tucson-based Knowledge Computing Corp.
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