Life inside the Beltway

[Chip Mefford <cmefford@avwashington.com>]

New technology for the cops. It brings tears of joy to
my eyes to think of all the children that this new
technology will save.




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Alexandria police have a new high-tech tool to help
them catch fugitives and find missing people.
Police officials last week unveiled new digital
scanners and cellular transmitters that allow
cruisers to transmit photographs in less than a
minute. That means an officer can scan in a family
photo of a lost child and send it to all active
patrol cars nearly instantly.

The technology also lets the police send photos to
the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, which can then pass information on to
other police departments.

"In the search for a missing child, time is the
enemy," said Ernie Allen, president of the
Arlington-based center. "The more quickly we can
provide a child's image, the greater the likelihood
we can find the child."

Alexandria and College Station, Tex., are the first
two police departments in the country to get this
image technology, officials said. Although the two
departments use different computer systems, they
are able to send pictures to each other via a
computer center in Florida.

At a demonstration last week, a College Station car
sent a photo to an Alexandria cruiser in about 40
seconds, and a photo from the National Center took
about the same time. It takes the same amount of
time to send a photo to one car as to broadcast it
to all of the cruisers, allowing the department to
blanket an area with images immediately, officials
said.

The same technology will allow Alexandria to send
photos to neighboring jurisdictions as soon as they
 get computers that receive digital images. Federal
Highway Administration officials said they expect
this kind of system to become widely available over
the next two years.
 Alexandria is spending $800,000 to outfit its
 patrol cars with the new scanners and portable
computers that can run criminal record checks.
Adding the scanning technology "is an opportunity
we just couldn't miss," said Lt. Michael Clancey,
who commands the vice-narcotics division.

 Most of the money for the computers -- $500,000 --
comes from two federal grants and assets seized
from criminals, officials said. The department is
buying 82 computers, ensuring that most on-duty
cars will have them.

 "Alexandria has been on the forefront of creative
development in the use of technology," said Daniel
 Rosenblatt, director of the International
 Association of Chiefs of Police.

 � Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
By Brooke A. Masters
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