Information is ultimately the lifeblood of any community’s public safety system. Real-time details in a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system about police, EMT, and fire team locations; information about events or incidents; known weapons or hazardous chemicals at an address; and more are crucial to operations and officer safety.
Increasingly, though, jurisdictions, agencies, and neighboring communities are realizing that there are distinct benefits to working cooperatively. A unit in Community A may actually be closer to an incident or fleeing suspect on the outskirts of Community B and would be able to respond faster than a unit in Community B if there were close integration between the communities’ CAD systems (assuming also that a mutual aid agreement was in place). Additionally, in large-scale incidents requiring coordination among multiple agencies, efficient coordination and communication are critical and can be aided by integrated information sources.
Dave Bermingham and Kevin Konczal, “Computer-Aided Dispatch Hubs, High Availability, and the Cloud,” Tech Talk, Police Chief 88, no. 3 (March 2021): 56–57.
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