Law-enforcement technologyTechnology helps Jersey police fight crime in real-time

In the last decade massive technological breakthroughs have made information more accessible than ever before and law enforcement agencies are increasingly taking advantage of new mobile technology to help fight crime.

In Salem County, New Jersey prosecutor John Lenahan said, “There has been such an advancement in technology as it relates to law enforcement.”

“It’s a whole different world out there,” he added.

According to Lenahan, the new norm is instant communication in real-time.

“Whether it’s an Amber Alert or an individual who’s wanted on a serious offense, the information is transported in real time,” he said. “Every twenty minutes, I receive email alerts from the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations Intelligence Center.”

One such system that enables real-time crime fighting is Mutualink.

With Mutualink, law enforcement officials can instantly view live video surveillance footage from any security camera network including courthouses, banks, and schools from a smartphone.

Sheriff Robert Austino hopes to bring Mutualink to Cumberland County, New Jersey, but money is hard to come by.

“Most often, we obtain our equipment through grants,” Austino said. “But even that type of funding is getting tight.”

Austino notes that Atlantic County already has the system in place at eleven casinos in Atlantic City.

He added that if Mutualink were installed in Cumberland, it would benefit all emergency responders and radically change how they communicate.

Meanwhile in Gloucester County, New Jersey, the County Prosecutor’s Office has been using iPads to cut down on the amount of paperwork floating around the office and expedite criminal proceedings.

When used in conjunction with the Infoshare software system, iPads transform the entire county’s twenty-two municipal police department’s documents including incident reports, photographs, handwritten witness statements, and other records into digital documents.

Prior to installing the Infoshare system, prosecutors and law enforcement officials would have to share file cabinets full of information on a single case, photocopying and faxing hundreds of pages of documents to transmit critical documents.

Now officials can simply email important documents saving time and reducing clutter.

“Infoshare eliminates the time-consuming steps of copying, packaging and mailing documents,” said Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Brook.

Craig Mangano, the police chief of West Deptford, said Infoshare has made things more efficient, so officers can now spend more time on the streets than in the office.

“Even for the smallest of cases, there can be a considerable amount of paper,” said Mangano. “Infoshare streamlines the process of document transfer.”

Brook also noted that with the time savings and the increase in efficiency, cases have been moving ahead more swiftly.

“It has been said that justice delayed is justice denied,” Brook said. “The Infoshare system brings more immediacy to the process and fights unnecessary delay as the prosecutor’s office continues its mission to administer justice for its constituency.”