SEAL BEACH : Police Get OK to Set Up Computer Contract
Officials in the only Orange County city without computerized police records were given the go-ahead Monday night to negotiate a contract for computer services from the city of West Covina.
The Seal Beach City Council approved negotiations to establish a computerized records and dispatch system to eliminate the cumbersome filing cabinet search procedures now used by its Police Department.
When a police officer is sent to a home to handle a disturbance, for example, police dispatchers have no access to records that might warn of past problems at the same address, according to City Manager Jerry L. Bankston.
The city has balked at the estimated $365,000 cost of purchasing a computer system to automate police records. But West Covina officials have offered to share computer services with a limited number of cities. The West Covina Police Department was chosen as a demonstration site for a state-of-the-art computerized system developed by OCS Technologies.
Bankston said it would cost Seal Beach $140,000 for computers and training, with an additional $1,750 a month for telephone line connections from the city’s Police Department to a host computer in West Covina. By comparison, Bankston said it would cost about $10,000 a year in maintenance costs for a city-owned system.
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