Virginia Agencies Use Shared System To Fight Crime, Improve Public Safety

Three southwest Virginia counties and the City of Norton will use a shared Spillman system to exchange data and reduce overhead costs.

Spillman Technologies, Inc. is a manufacturer of law enforcement and public safety software, providing products, training, support, and services to more than 950 agencies and 50,000 public safety professionals.

The Wise County Sheriff’s Office and Wise County Central Dispatch; the Dickenson County Sheriff’s Office and the Dickenson County Communications Center; the Lee County Sheriff’s Department and Lee County 911, the City of Norton Police Department, and the City of Norton 911 Center will be storing and sharing law enforcement data on two of the company's servers hosted by Dickenson and Wise Counties.

The system will allow the agencies to reduce costs associated with buying, maintaining, and administering the server equipment, said Mark Cvetnich, Director of Operations for the Dickenson County Communications Center. Without the system in place, he said, each county or city would have to purchase a server and a back-up server.

Cvetnich said that the agencies had been searching for a vendor that would enable them to share a server, with little success. Once they examined this particular solution, they discovered that agencies have been utilizing shared servers for years. The software is expected allow the agencies to share critical information about suspects, incidents, evidence, and more.

"We are excited to use the latest technology to our advantage to help us fight crime and improve public safety for our citizens," said Wise County Sheriff R.D. Oakes.

Wise County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Gene Vanover said that the company’s mobile software should provide officers in the field quick access to data about potentially dangerous suspects and situations.

"It’s an officer safety issue to me," Vanover said. "To be able to put that technology to use in a law enforcement application and share data with other agencies is vital to officer safety."

When the agencies go live with the system in 2012, they will be among public safety agencies in thirty-five states across the nation using software from Spillman.

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