Hand-held technology for police on beat

8:42am Wednesday 28th May 2008

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Police in Hertfordshire will now be carrying hand-held electronic devices on the beat after receiving a £1.9 million grant to invest in mobile technology.

Hertfordshire Constabulary made a successful bid for a share of £50m allocated by the Home Office to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA). Around 1,000 officers around the county have already received Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) devices which allow them to be provided with incident logs, crime reports and Police National Computer information while out of their stations. Deputy Chief Constable Simon Parr said: "This is excellent news for Hertfordshire and an acknowledgement of the work we have carried out recently as one of five pilot forces taking part in a national trial, involving officers using hand-held PDAs." The additional funding will enable the provision of a further 1,000 PDAs, and 300 car-based devices.

Det Chf Con Parr added: "This will enable our processes to become more efficient and there will be less need for officers to return to a police station to carry out checks, increasing the time they can spend out on patrol.

"We intend to change the way this force does business, increasing our responsiveness and our visibility." Yasmin Batliwala, Hertfordshire Police Authority chairman, said: "This grant will enable the constabulary to step up its work on cutting bureaucracy for officers and staff on the frontline of policing and make them even more visible and accessible to the people of Hertfordshire." A total of 38 forces across England and Wales made bids for funding.