Total Enforcement just doesn’t work, well.

Thank God for Terrie Morgan-Besecker and The Times Leader, without whom we wouldn’t know that the half a million dollar records management system the city bought back in 2009, known as Total Enforcement simply doesn’t work.

“The whole thing is a joke,” said one officer. “It’s such a pain and time-consuming.”

The lack of an appropriate vehicle code in the system is one of the most frustrating things, a second officer said. “I can see the city ordinances not being in there, but the two state statutes you need the most are the crimes code and vehicle code,” the officer said. “For the money they paid, you’d think it would list all the charges in there.”

• Yet according to Hanover Township, and several other communities in our county the far cheaper Alert System comes preloaded and does everything Duh-Soye said Total Enforcement should do.

While acknowledging there have been some issues in fully implementing the system, Dessoye said he believes it works well in meeting the department’s needs.

• Except for work in the field, and save officers valuable time.

“This is the system we thought would work for us with the volume of information we have,” Dessoye said.

• What Duh-Soye should have said, is once we got those cash filled key chains we were SOLD!

Dessoye largely dismissed the officers’ complaints, saying they’re upset because they don’t want to do the work required to create reports. “It may not make officers on the street happy because it requires them to do a lot of work,” he said.“It’s a good system for management. It they’re not happy, too bad … They have to work with the equipment we give them.”

• WOW Chief, really? Tough Darts is truly the best you could come up with????

The officers who criticized the program said they thought the idea was to streamline tasks.

• Streamline tasks? This is Wilkes Barre, the only streamline in this town is the flow of bribes to the King’s pocket.

The system was designed to allow police officers to complete reports from the laptops in their vehicles. Problems with communicating with the server delayed full implementation of that process until this February. Laptops are now in place in 10 cruisers.

• It only took 4 years to get the now outdated laptops installed, that seems like progress to me!

Officers still can’t do all reports from the laptops, however, because the system is not connected with the county’s 911 system, which means 911 cannot transmit certain information officers need to the laptops, as it can with other records management software programs, said one officer.

• Like the widely used, and much CHEAPER Alert system I’m betting?

The officers said, to be fair, the program does have some good points. For instance, an officer can type in a suspect’s name or an address and learn whether the person had prior charges, or if there had been previous calls to the address.

But they noted other records management systems have those capabilities without the drawbacks presented by Total Enforcement. They questioned why that program was chosen over the far more popular, and less expensive, system known as Alert, produced by Metro Technology Services Inc., of Wayne, Pa.

• I’m betting the Alert System didn’t come with a nifty key chain.

City spokes joke Drew Mc-Laugh-lin noted that, at the time the city was reviewing Total Enforcement, plans were for it to incorporate with a countywide records management system that was being touted by former Luzerne County Commissioner Greg Skrepenak.

• If only poor Greg didn’t get caught with his hand in the Taxpayers Cookie Jar!

While Dessoye firmly defended the city’s choice, he said he’s open to discussing police officers’ concerns with the system. A fair evaluation can’t be made until the system is entirely implemented, he said, which will likely be several years from now.

• What, several years from now? Does anyone know the shelf life of technology?

Wake Up Wilkes Barre

Source: 

• W-B system just won’t compute
• Documents: Ex-county officials received gifts from ex-NYC officers