The 111 Files: New tools to make impact on crime

The police are going through a significant period of change with the recent introduction of the new mobility devices for all their frontline personnel. The devices that have been issued are iPhones and iPads.

This considerably increases the technological capabilities of our people and will aid us greatly in our day-to-day business.

In practical terms, it allows our people to access a number of police-specific applications. These include completing checks on vehicles and people while out and about on patrol.

This greatly aids in our ability to locate stolen vehicles, or vehicles that have been flagged as wanted, such as in relation to petrol drive-offs, recidivist drunk drivers etc.

These checks can be completed by the passenger in the patrol vehicle as they are completing preventative patrols.

It also increases our ability to complete checks on people dealt with at the roadside, including being able to access photos to confirm identity, and well as other tools such as checking whether people are wanted for any reason.

Another police application is the ability to check which jobs are outstanding, allowing our patrols to assign themselves to outstanding jobs in the area that they are patrolling.

Emails can be checked while our people are out and about, negating the need to come back into the stations, and the iPhones allow us to dictate our prosecution files via phone to our file managers, who will then prepare the files to prosecution standards.

With all these advances, you will see us out and about more engaging in crime-prevention activities to ensure that we ultimately reduce crime and crashes in Rotorua.

Inspector Ed van den Broek is the acting Rotorua police area commander