Content provided by Durabook
By Captain Bradley Thompson
In Newnan, Georgia, when an officer of the law jumps out of their patrol car responding to an emergency, they don’t have a second to take their in-vehicle computer out of its mount to bring it with them. Inside the closed car, in summer, temperatures can easily reach up to 120°F or more – enough to crack the computer screen, sap the battery and potentially destroy the device. Executing a PIT maneuver in a patrol unit can also give a mounted computing device a hard jostle, potentially damaging it.
As a police captain in Newnan, I recently managed the process of selecting new, rugged in-vehicle computers – executing field trials, conducting training and ultimately deploying computers that must be able to withstand these conditions and more while reliably providing the computing performance that supports our officers.
The Newnan Police Department
Newnan, Georgia is a city of roughly around 45,000 citizens over 19.1 square miles located about 30 minutes south of Atlanta. Like most any other town of this size, there are pockets of Newnan where drugs are a problem or there is gang activity. Statistically, we average one or two murders a year in our town.
Ours is a medium-size department with 96 sworn officers and 103 total employees. Out in the field on an average day, my 12-hour patrol shifts operate with 10 officers on a shift, and we have four patrol shifts. On any given day, I have about 15 to 20 officers out in the field in patrol, traffic and motorcycle units. When an officer completes their training, they are assigned a patrol unit that is theirs. They take it home with them. I run approximately 55 cars in the field and two motorcycle units.
Part of my job is to make sure officers have the proper equipment in the cars – something that’s reliable and will hold up inside the car in day-to-day operations.
Time for an update
About four years ago, the computers in our cars were approaching their end of life. It’s crazy, but I can’t really put officers out in the field unless they have a computer in the car. We’re all so reliant on our computers now that being without that device hamstrings somebody trying to do their work in the field.
The chief tasked me to go out and meet with a couple of companies, start doing some field tests and see what would work with our computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system and what we have here.
My goal from the beginning was to do the best I could to put in the best equipment I could for what these men and women needed to get the job done out in the field. I wanted to give our officers something they could be proud to have in their car.
I have a trusted contact I reach out to when I need computer or any type of IT equipment. I told him the characteristics of the device I was looking for: durability, battery power, anti-glare and the ability to hold up under temperature. He put me onto Durabook.
Field testing
A lot of our field testing was done by the officers themselves, not just me. That’s important because I don’t sit in that car every day, they do. Their voice and opinion matter a lot.
We took the Durabook U11 Rugged Tablets out of the box, the IT department uploaded our programs into them, and probably within an hour of IT completing the upload process, I had them out in the field running. We didn’t have any downtime with the computers memorywise; they held up to all the programs loaded in. They maintained everything they were supposed to do out in the field and were easy to maneuver and operate.
We field-tested for roughly a month, moving U11 Rugged Tablets to traffic and patrol division cars, and I just let the officers use them.
In the daytime it gets bright in the car, but Durabook has a sunlight-readable display that keeps the glare down, allowing officers to see the computer screen in the car or outside in direct sunlight, which helps tremendously.
In the past, when I knew a car was going to be in the parking lot for a while, I would tell the supervisors to pull the computers out and not leave a brand-new computer sitting in a hot car.
I did a little bit of testing just out of curiosity, and on some of our hot days I left a Durabook computer sitting in the car to test it out. There were no issues with it – it fired right up. That’s what they’re designed for. And hey, I’m a believer.
Sometimes, unfortunately, we may get wrapped up in an accident when we’re trying to stop a motor vehicle or something. We’ve not had an instance where the Durabook has ever been damaged.
At the end of the week, I’d ask the officers, “What’re the pros and cons about it? Is there something that you like about another computer?” And everybody had amazing comments about the U11 Rugged Tablet. Consistently I got that the computer functions like it’s supposed to. Getting that many officers at one time to agree on something is not easy.
We had purchased of some of a competitor’s rugged computers and had those in the cars. It’s a very good product. But costwise, when we field-tested the Durabook, for what it was putting out versus the product they were putting out there, it did not make sense to me to pay that extra price to get the same quality product that we got out of Durabook.
And so those two things really sold me as far as how our officers enjoyed working with it and its effectiveness.
Once I had the officers’ opinion and had crunched the information about price and feasibility of it for the department, I went to talk with the chief about it.
In addition to the U11 Rugged Tablets in their patrol cars, Newnan officers also have R8 Rugged Tablets for their motorcycles.
Durabook
Today, we use the U11 Rugged Tablets in the patrol cars, and we have two R8 Rugged Tablets on our motorcycle units. The smaller tablets work perfectly. We haven’t had any issue whatsoever with the Durabook computers as far as the heat or elements.
Grants fund a three-step process
But we were not going to be able to replace all 55 in-vehicle computers all at one time, budgetwise. We all have to look at our pocketbook when it’s the community’s money.
Instead we were looking at a way to phase things in a three-step process. Also, we didn’t want to run into this situation again where we had to replace all the computers at one time.
We applied for ARPA grant and received funding in 2022. We stipulated we would phase in this new computer system, and the grant allowed us to purchase 55 computers over three years. We started purchasing Durabook computing devices in 2023, acquiring 19 U11 Rugged Tablets in that first set. At the beginning of 2024, we did another purchase for 20 more Durabook tablets. And at the end of 2024, we completed the contract, purchasing the remaining order we had for the grant.
Applications and systems
We wanted to make sure we had a computer system that could hold up with all the equipment and apps we run on a daily basis. We run ticket printers in the cars. Of course,the CAD calling and 911 dispatch is all done through the computer.
The officers also use our records management system (RMS) to do their incident reports and documentation, court paperwork and things like that. We use GPS tracking for our accident reports on the computers.
Our cars have camera systems, and we have cameras mounted on officers as well. We also have cameras in different locations throughout the city – for example, in a heavy shopping center area. We use Flock cameras on all the outer perimeter roads that come in or out of the city, and they can pick up tags and car descriptions.
And they integrate with our camera systems. We have it set up in the cars where our supervisors can pull up the camera feeds at intersections where we have high accident calls and potentially determine the cause of accidents.
Everything is uploaded through Cradlepoint in the cars and connected through the AT&T FirstNet wireless network, and it all ultimately feeds through the internet service through the computers, which seamlessly support wireless connectivity.
Training
With officers who were already working out in the field, there was maybe an hourlong learning curve of going through and seeing what new buttons or things this computer would do. I just put the U11 in the car and let them play with it.
If it’s somebody new, part of their field training is to spend time learning the computer system and what it does and all the things that go with that computer and the technology itself.
We run through emergency situation training and driver training, and now a lot of our training is more scenario-based. One of the big things we focus on in driver training is distractions inside the vehicle. We teach the officers when we’re driving in high-stress situations not to look at the computer, just focus solely on driving. Our CAD system is a talk communication system where they’re letting the officers know in real time what’s going on. So officers are not having to focus on things other than just their driving.
Community relations
When the chief took over about five years ago, he made getting out in the community a priority. So, we have a community resource unit and are being proactive with our community. People can see what services are being provided for them, and we can build that connection with the people we’re trying to help. We let people see us every day so they don’t see us solely during the worst times of their lives.
We’ll take the motorcycles out for parade details, community relations, things of that nature. We’ll take our cars out and just open the doors. We do a lot of public events, and we do tours around the department. That’s why we try to buy equipment so that when we open that car door, people appreciate what’s coming to help them in a time of need.
We also use it as a recruiting tool at job fairs, for those looking to get into the business or those who are already in law enforcement but maybe their agency just doesn’t have the resources to do some of the things we have – maybe we can pull that person to it.
We also have a school resource unit consisting of 13 officers assigned to the schools from elementary through high school. Having that officer starting in elementary school connecting with the kids, high-fiving them and being out on the playground and interacting with them builds a connection where people know the officers on first-name basis and want to come up and interact with them. And with that connection we can get into the streets and be proactive as they get older and try to prevent them from getting caught up in gangs.
Results
In the case of a missing senior or child, computers in the cars are extremely important to helping us more quickly get on a track.
Back in the day, I would have a map of the city I’d roll out on the hood of the car and try to figure out where to go. Now I pull up on a scene, pull that tablet out of the car and pull up the map integrated in our CAD system. It will give me every single street, and I can block it out and start a perimeter. And then I can quickly get our canines and resources in an area.
We recently helped find an elderly person who had been missing for over five hours. We were assisting another agency because we have canine trackers. This was an area not known to our canine handling officer, but with the computer and GPS, within five minutes the dog was tracking and we had located this endangered person. When you have a person who is vulnerable, this decreases the amount of time they’re exposed to risk.
On the reverse side of that, if we have somebody who has escaped custody or is fleeing from the police, again, we can utilize the same resource to get a perimeter up in an area quickly. If we know a direction they’re headed, supervisors can position officers in an area where we can try to stop them, or control the situation as quickly as possible, and put an end to it.
For more information, visit Durabook.