Pontiac, MI, October 12, 2010 – Oakland County’s regional crime information sharing consortium has allowed 2,398.3 full-time equivalent officers to redeploy into community-oriented policing activities.
The Courts and Law Enforcement Management and Information System (CLEMIS), which has 100 law enforcement agencies in Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Wayne counties that supply and use records, was upgraded in 1998 using $17.1 million from a COPS MORE98 grant. An additional $5.7 million for CLEMIS improvements came from local matching funds from the Oakland County general fund for this critical regional initiative.
“CLEMIS demonstrates Oakland County’s commitment to both using leading edge technology and to creating truly regional initiatives,” said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson.
The COPS MORE98 grant, obtained with the assistance of U.S. Reps. Sander Levin and Joe Knollenberg, required that the CLEMIS upgrades redeploy 685.3 law enforcement officers into community-oriented policing. Oakland County more than tripled that number, according to the COPS MORE98 Grant Compliance Report, while former Farmington Hills Police Chief (and current Warren Police Commissioner) William Dwyer and Novi Police Chief David Molloy were at the helm of CLEMIS.
This current version of CLEMIS includes:
- Infrastructure improvements of high-speed, fiber optic communication among many CLEMIS agencies and an upgrade in wireless mobile data communications.
- In-vehicle computers and printers for tickets, crash and other reports produced by police officers.
- Automatic Vehicle Location so dispatchers can have better situational awareness by seeing where their officers are on a map while sending them to a scene.
- Computer-aided dispatching so information can be shared quickly between a dispatcher and officer.
- Indexing and tracking of criminal and non-criminal related incidents.
- Crime mapping, live scan fingerprinting, mug shot sharing, and video arraignment technology.
The bottom line is police in southeast Michigan – from local to federal – can function with greater efficiency, staying deployed on the street a greater portion of their shifts.
“The technology implemented during this project benefits virtually every facet of a law enforcement agency’s operation,” said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.
“CLEMIS is one of the most important tools police in southeast Michigan have to keep our residents and businesses safe from criminals,” added CLEMIS Chairman and Novi Public Safety Director David Molloy.
The method to calculate how many officers have redeployed into community-policing oriented activities was determined by the time saved for each patrol officer on various administrative activities such as creating tickets and reports electronically instead of writing them. Another benefit of CLEMIS is the collection of data from among 100 police departments that allows detectives to solve crimes, taking criminals off the street.
CLEMIS had its beginning in the late 1960s. Since then, both its mission and technology have evolved through several upgrades to the next generation CLEMIS used today by 100 southeast Michigan agencies which share information on the system and 230 public safety agencies which manage their administrative tasks. This crime information sharing and management consortium is believed to be the largest of its kind in the United States.
About Tom and Ann Gendich