Texas College Police Deploy Mobile Data System

BIO-key International Inc., a provider of finger-based biometric identification and wireless public safety, recently announced a contract award from the Collin College Police Department in Texas to deploy MobileCop, BIO-key's wireless query and messaging solution for law enforcement.

Collin College is located in Collin County, one of the fastest growing jurisdictions in the Dallas metropolitan area.

As is the case with most campus police departments in the United States, officers in the Collin College Police Department are licensed peace officers. They have county-wide jurisdiction and work under the same authority as local law enforcement personnel.

"Campus law enforcement faces the same challenges that any police department does," said Collin College Police Department Captain Michael Gromatzky. "With more than 44,000 students spread across five open campuses with day, night and weekend classes, we're like a small city."

With the deployment of BIO-keys' MobileCop solution, Collin College law enforcement officers will now be able to obtain critical information -- while at a traffic stop or other incident -- on a person or vehicle directly from the Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (TLETS) using laptops in their patrol cars.

"The biggest benefit of MobileCop is that officers now have at their fingertips the information they need to make the right decision, without having to call a dispatcher over the radio to run a plate or check an ID," Gromatzky said. "Previously, if the radio was tied up, the officer was tied up too."

The ability for dispatchers and officers to use MobileCop to communicate with each other also serves the unique demands of campus law enforcement.

"We value student privacy very highly," Gromatzky said. "Confidential data on a student broadcast over the radio can be overheard or even picked up by a scanner. Using MobileCop's silent, secure messaging feature, a dispatcher can send critical information on a student involved in an incident, for example, to the responding officer without that risk."

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