"CAD"

I often hear Lake County police mention a "CAD" in their patrol car. What is it?

LZ56 said:

I often hear Lake County police mention a "CAD" in their patrol car. What is it?

Click to expand...

Computer Aided Dispatch. Lake County uses Intergraph I/CAD and I/Mobile:

Computer Aided Dispatch | Incident Management

LZ56 said:

I often hear Lake County police mention a "CAD" in their patrol car. What is it?

Click to expand...

A scanner killer.

As indicated above, CAD stands for Computer Aided Dispatch. It's one of the many functions the squad car's computer handles. The CAD software provides the officer with not only the dispatch information, generally provided over the radio, but also additional information such as the caution notes for the address/suspect in question (e.g. "several large dogs", "mentally disturbed person", "gang member", "hates the police", etc.), history of previous calls at that address or with the suspect, additional notes on the call (such as additional information provided to 911 after the call was dispatched), etc.

Tennessee Highway Patrol CAD means it is a laptop in the car to receive messages on and to run plates and background checks right from the drivers seat in the patrol car plus they can send like text messages from the dispatch center to the car.

Nasby said:

A scanner killer.

Click to expand...

You got that right! It is as bad as encryption. Geauga FD's are heavy users. You hear the initial dispatch and that is it - nothing after.

Fulton County Ohio has a dispatcher who believes that the faster he talks, the quicker the response. As a result, most of his dispatches are very difficult to understand. CAD comes in handy in cases like this.