California Police Department Turns Patrol Cars Into Mobile Access Points

Located in Northern California’s Bay Area, the San Jose Police Department (SJPD) employs more than 1,300 sworn officers, comprised of 11 divisions with more than 67 specialized Units and assignments. These officers are responsible for the safety of the more than one million people residing in the nearly 180 square miles that compose California’s third largest city. The department is administered by a command staff, including the Chief, Assistant Chief and four Deputy Chiefs who preside over an Operations Command divided into four Bureaus.

Challenge

SJPD had been in the process of working to decentralize and digitize their paper records and field communications for paperless reporting. New paper reports were processed manually by the staff, resulting in lower productivity and inefficiency in the department. In addition, with upwards of 100,000 reports generated each year, staff worked overtime to access archived records by pulling boxes from a warehouse. In order to digitize the department’s communications, the department needed a reliable connection but was facing several performance issues. SJPD needed to find a scalable platform that included camera systems, video and remote sensors and communications equipment to create a paperless reporting and management system for wirelessly sending reports directly from the patrol cars in the field back to the main campus, turning patrol cars into mobile access points.