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Officials expect WiFi to transform public safety
By Jessica Scarpati/Staff writer
Wed Jun 27, 2007, 04:38 PM EDT
You don’t need a techie guru to tell you that South Brookline has got rotten wireless coverage.
While it’s a nuisance for cell phone users, for police it can be the difference between bagging a criminal and letting him get away.
"If they run a plate to see it’s stolen and they run into a dead zone, they don’t get the information until the time they get out,” said Police Officer Scott Wilder, director of technology for Brookline Police. “By then, the car is history.”
But public safety officials expect that scenario to vanish once the town rolls out a specially licensed border-to-border wireless network for public safety data transmission.
The technology, which falls into the town’s WiFi project, replaces the spotty Verizon cell carrier police and firefighters have been using for years.
To keep the information secure, responders will use a special frequency, 4.9 gigahertz, which can only be licensed to, used by and open to public safety officials.
The technology comes with the aid of Galaxy Internet Services, a Newton-based company contracted to be Town Hall’s Internet service provider as well as set up the wireless public safety network.
As part of the deal, Galaxy also will offer its Internet services to residents and businesses in addition to adding free wireless Internet “hot spots” around town (see related story).
Although neighboring communities, such as Cambridge, offer wireless Internet service to residents, officials said Brookline’s multifaceted approach has made the town a pioneer.
Brookline is likely the first in the region, and perhaps the country, to combine the border-to-border public safety frequency with consumer use and a “build it in” approach to maintaining the hardware, said Sandy Bendremer, Galaxy’s vice president.
“Brookline is probably going to determine decisions down the road in public safety [across the nation],” Wilder said.
It’s not just interrupted wireless service that has officials salivating.
The full WiFi launch would, for example, enable police to get live video feed of a bank robbery or allow firefighters on their way to a fire to download the building’s specs or the water pressure of the nearest hydrant.
“It gives us the ability to transmit a lot of data that we’re restricted with on the cell carriers,” Wilder said.
First responders could log into to the town’s GIS, or geographic information system. The enormous data system houses three-dimensional maps of buildings and streets.
“That laptop just becomes an incident command post,” Wilder said. “Access to that type of technology is worth its weight in gold.”
Meanwhile, WiFi could also transform how police do business.
Wilder said officers could set up small video cameras in areas with recurring car break-ins or vandalism. Via the secure frequency, the cameras could transmit the live feed to a cruiser or to police headquarters.
“This would’ve been a great technology to have when we had those Winchester Street incidents,” Wilder said, referring to a string of sexual assaults on the street over the winter.
But as technology enables more, does it come at the expense of privacy?
“I asked other public safety officials that have put cameras up in areas, and they say the response from the citizenry is great,” Wilder said. “You cannot hire a police officer and put them on every single location you want a set of eyes on.”
Moreover, Wilder said a camera would not turn stop-sign scofflaws into auxiliary criminals.
Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney with the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the possible short-term surveillance isn’t a major privacy concern.
“Our beef has generally been with general surveillance cameras that are put up in ordinary public places,” Wunsch said. “[If] they briefly want to have a camera up to solve a crime, we’re probably not going to squawk about that.”
The technology is still being tested before public safety officials deploy it department-wide this summer.
“We want to keep the officers in the vehicle, give them all the tools they need and all the access they would have sitting at their terminal in the station,” Wilder said.
If all goes according to plan, the setup should eliminate the need for police officers to make trips to headquarters to file an incident report if they cannot get signal in one part of town.
“You’ll always have increased police presence,” said Deputy Town Administrator Sean Cronin.
“Without increasing staff,” chimed in Marge Amster, commercial areas coordinator for the town.
Meanwhile, eliminating such trips to the station would also cut down on gas — and subsequently cost the town to refuel.
Cronin said the town would save up to $50,000 in equipment costs each year, once the WiFi network becomes active. The money would go back into the public safety budget, Wilder said.
Also on the side of savings, officials sought to construct the physical WiFi equipment — sitting on lampposts around town — so it would be easily adaptable to upgrades.
“One of the things these town looked at is building the network once and making it future-proof,” Cronin said.
Jessica Scarpati can be reached at jscarpat@cnc.com.
