U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Software Speaks, Improving Officer Safety and Efficiency

NCJ Number
200024
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 30 Issue: 4 Dated: April 2003 Pages: 110-117
Author(s)
Jeannine Wendorf
Date Published
April 2003
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This article discusses Virtual Partner, a system that verbally relates key items to officers in their vehicles.
Abstract
After entering a tag into a mobile software system, crime databases can return screens of information regarding a suspect vehicle when all the officer needs is the vital information, such as driver description, vehicle description, outstanding warrants, and whether the vehicle is stolen. Overlooking vital information can lead to unfortunate consequences such as releasing a wanted suspect, missing a potential terrorist, or detaining an innocent person. Officers are also distracted from the road, which can lead to losing suspects or accidents with other vehicles. This abundance of information can also lead to frustration by the officers, especially those not very technologically savvy. The Virtual Partner reduces distraction, streamlines the reporting process, and provides clean information for department databases. The core component is the Voice Response application, which analyzes the information from databases and verbally reads to the officer specific results. The Voice Response application also calculates license and registration expiration dates and provides a confirmation for warrant hits. These messages are delivered quickly and accurately using clear, easy to understand voice prompts. Appropriate alert tones notify the officer as to the seriousness of the response. Another component of the Virtual Partner system, the QuickTicket application, has dramatically improved the ticketing and reporting systems of some police departments. The QuickTicket module automatically populates the fields of an agency’s traffic ticket with the information generated while running the initial tag. The officer just needs to choose the proper citation from a pull-down menu, and the QuickTicket application will fill in the appropriate statute, court date, and time. QuickCrash can auto-populate State crash reports directly from the in-car computer. Virtual Partner is a completely modular system so a department can choose what components fit the needs of its officers.