Pflugerville Police Get New, Million-Dollar, Crime-Fighting Technology

PFLUGERVILLE, TX -- City council members recently approved investing more than $1 million for technology to be used by the police department.

On June 14, council approved an investment of $1.197 for a Computer Aided Dispatch and Records Management System (CAD/RMS) to replace the city's outdated unit, officials said.

“The current records management and dispatch system has been in place for more than 10 years and technology has changed dramatically in that time,” Police Chief Chuck Hooker said, pointing to the need for the new state-of-the-art technology. “Pflugerville is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, thus our police department needs this essential equipment upgrade to help us continue to serve our citizens and reach call demands.”

The new system automates large portions of the dispatch procedure, officials explained. The new CAD/RMS can send details to the officers in the field, help create expedited incident reports and includes an analytics capability.

“With the new software, we will have what is called in the industry, predictive analytics,” Hooker said. “We can quickly create maps to inform officers of crime patterns and calls for service when they come on shift, we can monitor trends and pinpoint problem areas more quickly and access real-time data from the field."

Additional benefits of the system include a more searchable database, ability to manage calls for multiple jurisdictions, mapping capacity and heightened evidence management with images and tracking interfaces, city officials added.