Regional Law Enforcement Data Exchange System Expands
In an attempt to start sharing law enforcement data and information across jurisdictions, police departments in five Massachusetts communities are giving their officers vital information about criminal records.

According to an article on the Government Technology website, the information sharing system will give police officers access to data from criminal records systems in all the communities, including information on stolen vehicles, outstanding arrest warrants, and more.

“As in many police departments across the country, officers in these five communities already had direct, wireless access to federal and state local law enforcement databases from laptops in their patrol vehicles,” the article says. “Getting information on stolen vehicles or outstanding arrest warrants from these sources before approaching a vehicle at a traffic stop, for example, is critical in protecting officer safety.”

“We all know that criminal behavior doesn't stop at the town or city line,” Patrolman Greg Kiff of the Plainville, Mass., Police Department, told the publication. “If someone’s looking to commit a crime in Plainville, there’s a good chance he’s been involved in similar behavior in nearby communities — or he associates with others from those communities. And there’s a good chance that there’s valuable information on that individual in the local RMS systems in those communities.”

Since none of the towns can individually afford the number of police officers needed to keep track of all the activities, the new system will allow them to share the information with each other.

It “is effectively a force multiplier for small towns like ours, letting us use the intelligence gathered from neighboring police departments to fill in the gaps and work smarter,” Kiff says. “Our five towns, with our limited resources, are now actually doing what everyone has just been talking about since 911 — communicating and sharing data.”