McAlester News-Capital, McAlester, OK

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November 12, 2005

McAlester police officers adjusting to new computer system

By Doug Russell

“He’s my buddy,” McAlester police officer Chuck Courts said. “We didn’t get along too good at first, but now we get along just fine.”

“He” is not a person. Instead, “he” is a computer system that has been adopted by many police departments in the state.

His name is ODIS, and that’s the name he’s generally called, although officers have been known to call him by other, more colorful names when they first get acquainted with him.

Still, Police Chief Jim Lyles said, “As far as I’m concerned, ODIS is here to stay. At least until something better comes along.”

The Offender Data Information System, or ODIS, is used by police departments across Oklahoma, including 42 sheriff’s departments and 106 municipal police departments, according to Mark Walker, a spokesman for the Criminal Justice Resource Center.

The center maintains the ODIS system.

Some departments, such as the Pittsburg, McIntosh and Latimer county sheriff’s departments, received grants to help pay for the computers. Others had to find a different way to pay for the computers and software the system requires.

Lyles said his department bought the system with money from a special fund financed with fines paid by juvenile offenders.

It cost the McAlester PD about $18,000 for the new computer system; something Lyles and Assistant Chief Walker Stewart say is well worth the money.

The department received 11 Dell workstations with flat screen monitors, one printer, a Dell XEDA processor/server, five digital cameras and special software to help track evidence.

“It’s a lot cheaper than it would have been to upgrade the old system,” Lyles said.

According to department records, it would have cost $50,530 to update the system previously used by McAlester police. By comparison, another new system that was examined would have cost $122,159.

“We just don’t have that kind of money,” Lyles said.

Instead, the department opted to spend $18,975 for ODIS. That includes a $5,000 per year maintenance agreement, $9,975 for computers and software, and $3,000 for a conversion package to help convert data stored on the department’s old system into data that can be stored by ODIS.

The conversion is the hardest part, since ODIS has some capabilities the old system didn’t — making it better for police departments — but lacks some other capabilities, making it more difficult for the court clerk’s office.

“We got our money’s worth,” Stewart said. “We’re still getting used to it, and we’ve still got some kinks to work out, but overall it’s a good system.”

People who are stopped by police officers working for an ODIS-equipped department can learn just how good the hard way. In the past, it was nothing unusual for an arrest warrant to be issued in one county and officers in another part of the state to be unaware of the warrant. This allowed offenders to avoid prosecution by simply staying out of the county which issued the warrant.

Not anymore.

With ODIS, each time information on an offender or suspect is put into the computer system, the information is stored in a central data base that is accessible to all other ODIS-equipped departments, making it easier to identify people who are wanted.

Every two hours, the main computer in Oklahoma City automatically polls other ODIS computers and downloads any new information, Walker said. That gives each department a backup file in another location and also allows information to be shared. In addition, he said, local computers can also be backed up automatically or manually.

ODIS cuts down on the amount of paper generated by a police department. “That saves trees and it saves money,” Lyles said. “We’re trying to do our part.”

It took a while for some of the officers to get used to doing their reports on computers, but that’s changing.

“We didn’t used to be friends, but we’re friends now,” Courts said. “ODIS is my buddy.”

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