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According to Sgt. Marcos Ferreira, work began on the system in 2016. Research and development took two years, and the system has been fully operational for three years.
“It was a very bumpy road,” Ferreira said. “Government already works at a slower pace than other industries; when you take police and courts into account, it’s even more complex ... it’s more static, they don’t like changes, and all the changes come from the Legislature down. It’s never from the bottom up, so it’s very slow.”
As a result, Ferreira added, “It took us time to talk to a lot of people and get the right stakeholders involved. We had to convince them that our vision would benefit everybody, so selling this process was a little difficult.”
However, once all stakeholders were on board, the departments focused on building the system to meet the needs of the city’s police officers, detention officers, police management, city court personnel and magistrates.
“There were some very obvious things we could do, especially in the area of paperwork,” Ferreira said. “We saw the ability to make that more electronic through changes in our legislation that allowed police departments to use more modernized systems and electronic signatures, so we went from there.”
In terms of specific benefits, the system offers faster processing times; decreased human error; the ability to conduct arraignments from a remote location; increased safety and security; lower costs and staffing requirements; electronic document storage; and an “easy-to-use” document archive.
As for how the system works, it uses data from the city’s existing computer-aided design, record management system and Java message service data warehouses to help complete required arraignment documents, including affidavits, commitment orders and emergency protection orders.
The system also allows detention officers to review all charges, affidavits, commitment orders and emergency protection orders associated with an individual’s booking record.
Regarding arraignment proceedings, hearings are conducted online via a video-conferencing service. During this process, judges can adjust forms and bond amounts remotely.
Once a hearing is complete, magistrates can share a copy of the defendant’s documents on their screen, so they can check each form and sign them electronically.
After that, all records are archived, and the system automatically sends an email with a link to the court documents to the court, detention center and other required entities.
This project started because “the police chief of Grand Prairie wanted to make some improvements to the way the police department works, especially when it comes to technology,” said Keshnel Penny, CIO of Grand Prairie. But “there has to be a partnership for this to work.”
Without partnership, Ferreira said, “this wouldn’t have happened. I think you have to have your higher-ups buy into the idea and try to find areas where you can potentialize some people with a better knowledge of the process and pair them up with somebody who knows how to actually do it; partnership is key.”
