By Beacon Staff
The Burlington city council unanimously approved the city’s portion of payment for a new record management system for the Burlington Police Department during a special meeting just before the regular work session Monday, Jan. 31.
Aside from obvious benefits in police efficiency, the new system developed will eventually allow citizens to access the daily incident reports.
For the last nine months, the incidents log on the Burlington Police Department web page have been blank, even as the arrest log is updated on a daily basis. Since April of 2021, the department has been keeping those particular records by hand. They’ve had no other choice.
“In April (of 2021), DESCOM (Des Moines County Communications) went to a new system that would not speak to our current system. So, our records clerks went from everything being dumped from DESCOM’s computer system to them having to hand-write everything,” Burlington Police Maj. Jeff Klein, Major of Operations for the BPD, said at a previous work session. “We can no longer publish to the media, as we used to.”
The department last purchased a records management system in 1998, and the incompatibility with DESCOM has hastened the department’s search for a new system. Klein told the city council during a work session on Dec. 27, 2021, that the department had found a system developed by Motorola – but it isn’t cheap.
“The total project cost is going to be roughly $900,000. Now before that makes anyone’s jaw drop, that is something split between us, Des Moines County and West Burlington,” Klein said. “The E911 board is going to pick up the cost of the CAD system, and the remaining cost is going to be split 45 percent Burlington, 45 percent Des Moines County and 10 percent by West Burlington.”
Klein said the system will not only restore record keeping but will also restore key information relayed to the computers placed in police officers’ vehicles. That information was not as robust as it was before the transition to a new DESCOM system in April, as councilman Matt Rinker discovered while taking a ride-a-long with the BPD.
“This will be an all-in-one fix, where we will not only get what we used to get before, but we will get it tenfold,” Klein said.
Changing the system won’t be quick; Klein said it will take 12 to 14 months to fully implement. During the special meeting Monday night, Burlington Police Chief Marc Denney assured the council that the Motorola system will work with DESCOM’s system.
“We purchased a complete platform,” Denney said.