By Molly Lovell
Staff Writer
   

    The Scarborough Fire Department recently installed a new system in one of its rescue vehicles that will help officials be more efficient while increasing public safety at the same time.
    The computer aided dispatch, or CAD system, will allow crews to take a laptop with them to a call and record all information on site. Fire Chief Michael Thurlow said they will also be able to file reports directly on the computer rather than coming back to the station.
    He said by the end of June the system will be installed in the department’s six main trucks and three ambulances.
    Thurlow said the system will communicate with local hospitals and will also allow the department to quickly access the files of “repeat customers.”
    He said the database allows crews to identify utility shut offs in businesses and multi-family occupancies along with smoke detectors and other hazards. Eventually the department wants to have floor plans and photos of buildings in the system.
    “I think we’re doing real well in the technology we use,” Thurlow said. He couldn’t gauge how the Scarborough Fire Department compares to other departments, saying they were “way ahead” of some and behind others.
    The Scarborough Police Department has been working with an electronic filing system since 1999 and was the first in the nation to implement such a program, said Chief Robert Moulton.
    “We have 54 miles to cover here. My vision was, I wanted officers to be able to write reports in the field because often times we only have two or three patrolmen out there covering all that area. If we’re at the station writing reports, we’re not in the community,” he said.
    Moulton said if an officer is sitting in a cruiser by the road or in a parking lot, most likely they are completing a report from a prior call while simultaneously monitoring the community.
    “In a time when everyone is trying to do more with less this helps us be as efficient as we possibly can,” he said.
    When a call comes in, a dispatcher sends the information to the officer through the system and radios the officer.
    Moulton said sometimes it’s in an officer’s best interest to take the call over the radio for safety reasons while other times a dispatcher will tell the officer to check the system for an especially sensitive call so residents with scanners can’t hear it.
    The system also allows officers to cross check with other agencies, meaning they can see if “John Doe” was arrested in another community. Moulton said Scarborough officers are also able to read another agency’s reports with proper permission. Agencies are able to put warnings in the system to alert an officer of an aggressive or violent person.
    Moulton said officer safety was a driving force behind installing the system.
    “It’s a whole different world. We just don’t know who we’re dealing with when we make that stop,” he said.