Washington State Patrol Documents Large Crash Scene with Photomodeler
Eos Systems Inc. announces that troopers with the Washington State Patrol are using the company’s Photomodeler software to create three-dimensional models of crash scenes.
Recently, Sergeant Jerry Walker’s team arrived at the scene of a crash that had tied up traffic on a busy highway. The Washington State Patrol’s Major Accident Investigation Team (MAIT) specializes in investigating especially large roadway mishaps, and this one was especially large: nine smashed cars and an overturned diesel tanker. Diesel fuel had spilled on the highway and caught fire.
The team of detectives, along with the Washington State Highway troopers and other emergency workers at the site, had to get traffic flowing again, interview drivers and witnesses, take measurements, and record every position of every vehicle, piece of debris, sign, skid mark, and gouge on the asphalt. The crash scene was 1,200 feet long.
MAIT investigators used Photomodeler to help document the crash scene. After taking at least three snapshots of the scene from different vantage points (a common procedure of documentation), officers later used the software to generate a three-dimensional model of the crash, providing highly accurate measurements of all visible objects related to the accident.
Investigators also use Photomodeler to calculate the speed, direction, and impact of the vehicles at the time of collision, and to create the visual aids they will use during courtroom testimony.
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Wisconsin Agency Partners with Maker of Public Safety Software
VisionAIR announces a new contract with La Crosse County, Wisconsin, a member of the Wisconsin Integrated Justice Information System (WIJIS). The county recently added the VisionCONNECT integration platform to the VisionAIR Public Safety Suite it is already using.
WIJIS plans to create a justice gateway, a single secure access point for justice information to be shared among multiple disciplines, including law enforcement. The justice gateway will allow authorized users access to information stored in various systems.
La Crosse County’s data sharing project was funded by the Office of Justice Assistance (OJA), which administers justice system grants in the areas of homeland security, juvenile justice, criminal justice, and the Violence Against Women Act.
The project will involve implementing VisionCONNECT’s browser-based portal as well as connecting the VisionRMS server in La Crosse County to the enterprise service bus (ESB) in Madison so that information can be shared with the state. It will also include a federated directory adapter to provide a single sign-on to the portal that will pass the credentials to connected systems for authentication.
“La Crosse County has been fortunate to be able to develop healthy cooperation between our law enforcement agencies regarding automation,” said Al Blencoe, emergency services technology coordinator for the county. “That, along with a positive partnership with VisionAIR, has helped us acquire funding for several key projects. VisionCONNECT is a component of our participation in the state data sharing initiative.”
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Connecticut Police Department Implements Wireless Network
Citrix Systems Inc. announces that the police department in Weston, Connecticut, has implemented the Citrix Presentation Server, designed to give officers secure, on-demand access to law enforcement applications from anywhere. The Weston Police project was led by TigerNet Systems.
The Weston Police Department installed the access platform to allow secure access to the department’s technology systems and specific applications such as the File Maker Pro records management system and the state of Connecticut’s Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) database, which contains state and national motor vehicle records and criminal history records, from the department’s patrol cars via wireless internet connections.
“By using Citrix, we’re no longer handcuffed to proprietary, desktop-based systems that are constantly interrupted, requiring us to re-sign on, reload, or reconfigure our devices,” said Patrick Daubert, a sergeant with Weston Police Department. “Our police officers are now working smarter. We estimate that with this technology in place, our officers are spending 40 percent more time in the field with the citizens of Weston and less time at headquarters filling out reports.”
Today, applications are centrally deployed and managed on Citrix Presentation Server, and each patrol car has a tablet PC that can access applications, including municipal, state, and federal criminal records, over a wireless network in real-time. Officers log in once and have uninterrupted access to all their applications while they change devices and network connections, even when they drive through wireless dead zones in their police cruisers.
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