Sean Longoria

Record Searchlight

Want to know whether your neighbors a few streets over had a break-in last week? How about whether vehicle thefts are spiking where you park for work every day?

That information will be just a few keyboard clicks away by summer 2019 as law enforcement in Redding, Anderson, Shasta County and local dispatchers are about to see a huge computer system upgrade.

“Really, the new system is a revamp from start to finish,” Redding Police Chief Rob Paoletti said. “It's not upgrading our computer system, it's replacing it.”

Over the next two years, each department will undergo the upgrade, replacing systems that is nearly 30 years old.

“It’s long overdue,” Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said.

One of the features Paoletti is most excited about with the upgrade is real-time data, which will allow police to respond to crime as it’s occurring. Paoletti said crime data can lag up to 45 days under the current system.

“The problem is gone or moved by the time we even get the data,” he said.

More: Redding police chief talks staffing, crime and more at town hall meeting

With the upgraded system, police will have more information to make smarter decisions about where to focus their efforts. That could take the form of the neighborhood police unit focusing on a few blocks downtown with the most reported crime instead of the entire downtown area, Paoletti said.

“Where are we creating the most calls for service and what’s creating those calls for service? We’ll have much easier access to generate those kinds of statistics once we get this system up and running,” Paoletti said.

The Tehama County Sheriff’s Office rolled out its own computer upgrade last month, including real-time crime mapping, a log of arrests and incidents handled by deputies, pictures of stolen vehicles and missing persons and alerts.

The system, which uses a different company than the one contracted for the upgrades in Shasta County, can show, for example, the 25 burglaries reported in the county during the last two months. Residents can also request extra patrols or home checks if they’re on vacation.

Spillman, a Utah-based subsidiary of Motolora, provides crime mapping for dozens of California cities — Oakland, Stockton and Sacramento to name a few — and many others throughout the country who use its computer systems. It's a popular feature that's also been requested at the local level.

“We do get asked that quite a bit from people who are looking to buy and relocate,” Bosenko said.

Paoletti was careful to note the new system won’t be a panacea for crime woes facing the area.

He also stressed the need for people to keep reporting crimes, even if they’re frustrated about a delay or lack of response from sworn officers. In March, Paoletti worried a lack of victims reporting property crimes drove a nearly 5 percent year-over-year drop.

More: Overall Redding crime rate drops, but violent crime up

“We’re still going to have challenges of drugs are a misdemeanor, the jail is full and all that kind of stuff,” Paoletti said.

Redding Police Lt. Bill Schueller, who’s handled much of the computer upgrade project, said the public portal is one of the last phases to roll out, hence the wait until possibly 2019.

Dispatchers and records techs will see their computers upgraded first, then sworn officers will likely see upgrades inside their patrol cars. Each phase of the rollout has to be thoroughly tested, Schueller said.

“They have to run perfectly for 30 days before we accept them and before we pay for them,” he said.

Schueller is excited about the upgrade.

“I think the folks here, including the news media, will use it quite a bit,” he said.



