Modern Technology Starting to Boost Staffordshire’s Frontline

Staffordshire’s Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner, Matthew Ellis has this week signed off the decision to provide new technology to transform the police’s frontline resources.

The new GPS technology in cars will make sure that the right officer is sent to the most appropriate incident faster than ever before.  This move is a significant step forward in major investment in new technology that will see officers being provided with the right tools to do their job, freeing them up to be more visible and giving them more time to do frontline policing.

New technology is fundamental to the radical new approach in the Commissioner’s five year strategy, Safer, Fairer, United Communities which is currently under consultation.

Mr Ellis said, “Getting officers visible and out and about in communities doing frontline policing, is the heart of my five year strategy to reduce crime and help communities to feel safer as well as being safer.  This is a small but significant change and goes some way towards my plans to provide the right tools for officers to free up thousands of extra hours a week for local policing.

“As budgets shrink, I’m confident that by spending better we can achieve more. If nothing changes in Staffordshire the reduced funding will mean poorer services in the future.  But things here are changing to provide better value for money, more targeted and more effective ways of delivering what’s needed.”

Chief Constable, Mike Cunningham added, “Public safety and quality of service are at the heart of this project and the new GPS system will mean that our control rooms have up-to-date information about where each vehicle is and what skills the drivers have so we can better deploy resources to incidents, getting the right person there, with shortest possible travel.

“The equipment will increase officer safety and the ability of the Control Rooms to send assistance.  However, in addition to the vehicle equipment, the new equipment will make use of GPS signals from hand-held radios, joining this information with the new data from vehicles to give the Control Rooms and commanders the best possible real-time picture of police resources.”