The St. Paul police department says a software company missed three dates to launch an integral program, and now the police chief has told the company they broke the contract.

The department has paid about $720,000 so far for the $1.5 million system, and Police Chief Todd Axtell is saying the company owes them money.

St. Paul police have been working to get a new records management system for five years — it’s the backbone of everything the department does.

“Our first choice was to get this software to work, and if that doesn’t happen, we will do everything we can to make the department whole through the remedies in the contract,” said Assistant Police Chief Robert Thomasser on Friday.

A CentralSquare Technologies vice president, however, wrote that the police department was seeking “additional functionality within the software that it is outside of the original project scope.”

Police and the company have exchanged letters, but it’s not clear what’s going to happen next — the contract is expired, and the police department continues to work with a records management system that’s 20 years old.

‘HUB’ OF THEIR WORK

The St. Paul police records management system is “the hub of all of our systems,” Thomasser said.

It’s the computer program that patrol officers use to type their reports and file them in a department database. Investigators log into the system to access officers’ initial reports, then build cases as they write their own reports about interviews with suspects and witnesses. They use the system to forward cases to prosecutors for charging consideration.

Members of the public also request police reports, which the department accesses from the records management system.

And it’s important because it’s about public safety, transparency and being good stewards of the public’s money, the police department says.

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With new shops and street improvements, Saturday’s ‘Rice and LarpenTOUR’ showcases three cities “We heard about MNLARS and we don’t want to be that,” said Thomasser, referring to Minnesota’s beleaguered computer system for vehicle title and license plate tabs.

A priority of the police administration is having a new records system that can automatically push out public information to the department’s website. It’s also intended to provide better crime analysis and allow investigators to connect dots between cases.

SYSTEM IS 20 YEARS OLD

St. Paul police built their current records management system about two decades ago and it still works, so “we don’t have to be careless in our decision-making of where we go next,” Thomasser said.

The police department started planning a new records management system in 2014. They spent about two years doing “a deep dive on what our system was capable of doing now and what we needed,” Thomasser said.

The department received bids from various companies and decided on Zuercher Technologies. The company is now owned by CentralSquare Technologies, and they did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

The new records management system was supposed to go live in August 2018, but that date was pushed back until the end of 2018, Thomasser said. The launch date was then set for April, and the system still isn’t ready to roll, Thomasser said this week.

“We can’t make it work to the standards that the company said they could deliver, which would be to the standards that the people of St. Paul would need,” Thomasser said.

But Libby Stengel, CentralSquare vice president of professional services, wrote in a May 1 letter to Thomasser that there were development requirements for the department’s “expanded scope” of the project.

She said the program would be ready to go in March 2020, and additional items requested by the police department would be made available over a one-year period to follow.

CHIEF SAYS CONTRACT WAS BREACHED

Axtell disputed the matter in a May 15 letter to the company, saying “CentralSquare re-characterized many of the functional deficiencies as ‘expanded’ functionality or ‘features.’ … By CentralSquare’s response, a fully functioning system would not be delivered until March 2021.”

He said his letter was notice to CentralSquare that they were “in breach of its warranties and contracts,” and he asked the company to “refund all licensing and maintenance fees” within 30 days.

The police department is still “working with Zuercher to ensure the city is made whole,” Thomasser said Friday. The contract with the company expired July 2.

CentralSquare, which is based in Florida, was formed after several companies — including Zuercher — merged in 2018.

The company serves more than 7,500 organizations with public safety and public administration software, according to its website. Its customers include Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston and Dallas, the company’s chief executive officer told the Wall Street Journal last month.

RAMSEY COUNTY AGENCIES HAVE TRIED TO FIND SOLUTIONS

Other law enforcement agencies in Ramsey County use Zuercher, and they were hoping to use the system to share information with and from St. Paul when they came on board, said Lt. Kerry Crotty, who oversees the Maplewood Police records department.

The Maplewood department has been using Zuercher software since 2015. “We’ve certainly had our share of issues,” Crotty said.

Patrol officers have told Crotty a traffic stop that would normally take four to five minutes could now last eight minutes. Officers use Zuercher Suite in the laptops in their squad cars — they type in information for citations and print them — but the program “takes longer than we feel that it should,” Crotty said.

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Suspect sends Rochester police suicidal messages, flees, dies causing head-on collision “It takes 30 seconds for the program to open, and you fill in driver information and then it takes 15 to 20 seconds to go to the next page,” Crotty said. Those little delays continue throughout the process, adding up to minutes. And that keeps drivers from continuing on with their day and officers from getting to their next call, Crotty said.

Crotty regularly talks with the Ramsey County sheriff’s office, along with police in New Brighton and Mounds View who use the system, and they have tried to come up with solutions.

“We’ve all tried to work with Zuercher to figure out why the system is slow, and they haven’t come up with anything,” Crotty said.