28s, 29s and 44s.

[Chaos703]

This has always boggled me:

In the day and age of the internet — nearly instant data transfers and massive database mining, etc — why do dispatchers have to check for warrants in specific counties? And why does it sometimes take more than 1 second to get license and tag returns?

For the warrants, is there not some big national database that cross references every US department's wants and warrants? Shouldn't a dispatcher be able to pop in a DL and instantly know if a guy has warrants ANYWHERE?

Or am I just misunderstanding what I'm hearing?

 

[okla-lawman]

To get to Fantasyland turn right and go past tomorrow land. When a drivers license is run it goes to olets in OKC. Olets then fowards it to nlets for an NCIC check. So your message goes over phone lines to OKC. Then to Virginia over the phone lines. NCIC is quite happy with a 60 second response time. Then the system repeats itself coming back to th agency. Olets has upgraded their system several time over the last year and it as gotten faster. When it rains though the system goes down due to the phone lines.
To run a 10-28 it goes to olets then to the State Tax Comm. I have a direct link to the tax
comm and do not have to go through olets and I can tell you there computer is not fast directly. Now add another computer (olets) that gets even slower.

Combined warrants check.....like I said fantasyland. A lot of counties do not enter most of their warrants into NCIC. I heard from a DA in Tulsa less than 50% of the FELONY warrant in Tulsa co. get entered into NCIC. The state has been working on a really great system called ODIS. Ideally you will be able to enter a name and be able to do a warrant check in all 77 counties, 100 something cities, be able to pull up records, booking photos, contacts, accidents, protective orders so forth. I have access to ODIS and it is good and will be great. Two incidents recently brought this out. !st I was looking or a rape suspect. He had a felony warrant. We had no photos. I ran him through odis and got a booking photo rom muldrow pd. The other I was serving a out of county warrant on a subject. I ran him through odis for more info and came up with 17 more warrants. The charges ranged from trafic to drugs. The problem?? Both the Tulsa and OKC metro areas have not embraced it. TPD/TCSO have regfused. They want to stay with TRACIS. I feel it is a major mistake. ODIS is not linked to olets and has to be ran separately. There is another system called Pegasus that some depts are playing with. It is a fingerprint operated system. In the oficers
car there will be a fingerprint reader. The subject places his finger on it and it does all the work.

 

[Chaos703]

DEAR GOD!!!!!!!!!

That's the most insane story confraglerock I ever heard. I can use instant global data mining to find obscure William Shatner trivia or look at dirty pictures hot polynesian prostitutes, but you can't find out if a guy from the next county is a public menace who should be locked up. That's nuts.

 

[Secret_Squirrel]

If you think that's nuts Chaos, go get yourself a job in public safety. Work that stuff for a few years and then you can write a book about what's nuts.

 

[freqscout]

Why use the internet or other efficient means of electronic communication when there is the teletype? It has been around forever. Proven technology. The epitomy of greatness in like...1970.
(Sarcasm intended)

 

[WX5JCH]

Last time I heard this new stuff cost $$$$. All from the taxpayer. I'm sure they don't want to spend money on upgrading this old system. Look at the FBI, they are still in the UNIX days.

 

[car2back]

I did my OLETS cert class in June, and after hearing about all hoops a message has to jump through to get where it's going, I think the whole system is pretty efficent, considering.

And why does it sometimes take more than 1 second to get license and tag returns?

90% of the time a return from both VREG (or SCOM) and NCIC are instantanious. You can really tell how good a dispatcher is by how quick they can give a return

Last time I heard this new stuff cost $$$$. All from the taxpayer.

OLETS is a service offered by DPS to LE agencies in Oklahoma, and isn't a given (it can even be revoked if terms aren't met). Departments pay for the service out of their budgets, just like wlectric, water, etc.

 

[K5MAR]

Yeah, teletype, like back in the Seventies! When I worked at Stillwater PD, we had this marvelous Western Union Model 28 TTY. Sending a message required you to use the keyboard in offline mode to create a punch tape that was then run through a reader that sent the message to OLETS. One mistake and you were back to square one, retype the whole message.

It was such a laborous process that we kept a index card box on the dispatch desk with all the current Oklahoma stolen vehicle tags for quick reference. Every night sometime after 3 AM OLETS sent out a list of all the stolen vehicles that had been entered in the previous 24 hours. It was one of the duties of the 3rd shift dispatcher to use that list to update the index cards.

So what I'm saying is, you don't realize how good you have it. Back then a 28, 29, 43/44 or 48 could takes hours to return, and sometimes they never did. Lost in limbo somewhere.

Say, those of you one the job now, do some of the big agencies still send out the marvelous Christmas and New Years greetings banners? Those things were works of art, imagine a 6 foot long piece of TTY paper that had a picture of Santa in his sleigh being pulled by the reindeer and a Merry Christmas! greetings from whatever agency (Tulsa used to be big on that), all done up using letters of the alphabet. I know OLETS briefly put a stop to it after getting complaints from some agencies that it cost them too much money in multi-part carbonless TTY paper to print all those banners. We always hung them above the console at SPD and sent the carbon down to the squadroom.

Mark

 

[okla-lawman]

I know I am getting old. I remember that when I first got into law enforcement NCIC used to brag about a 15 minute response time........

Car2 back is right. I have not dispatched in years. But on my MDT response is very fast.

Okla. is just behind the times. Arkansas has had a statewide system for almost 20 years.

Skywatch it does not necessarily cost money. The new ODIS system (search web they have demo video) is all being paid or by a federal grant. If you check you phone bills there is a 911 surcharge. Most of the 911 systems are long since paid off. The monies can now be used or certain communication related expendetures.

 

[car2back]

Say, those of you one the job now, do some of the big agencies still send out the marvelous Christmas and New Years greetings banners?

Nope The best thing that's come out in the last couple years I've been on a terminal is the "you can send 28's till the cows come how but you won't get a response" broadcast that came from the Network Center someone later had to TTY an apology for . And there is that story about the dispatcher that typed a NC17 rated letter to his girfriend "BETH" and accidentally hit transmit instead of print... Rumor is the Chief at Bethany PD just happened to be standing at the printer when that came through :lol:

 

[Chaos703]

Skywatch it does not necessarily cost money. The new ODIS system (search web they have demo video) is all being paid or by a federal grant. If you check you phone bills there is a 911 surcharge. Most of the 911 systems are long since paid off. The monies can now be used or certain communication related expendetures.

I hate to tell you this, but federal anything costs us money. Remember government doesn't have a penny that they didn't take from us with the end of a metaphorical gun.

If you think that's nuts Chaos, go get yourself a job in public safety. Work that stuff for a few years and then you can write a book about what's nuts.

Here are a few title suggestions:

The business of public safety: That magic realm where government inefficiency, union politics and personal courage clashes head on with, drunkenness, violence, firearms and occasional nudity.

If that's too long, I'll call it:

"I'm from the Government and I'm here to help" plus 10 other oxymorons from the unpublished pages of Liquor & Firearms.

 

[mancow]

WORD !

If you think that's nuts Chaos, go get yourself a job in public safety. Work that stuff for a few years and then you can write a book about what's nuts.

 

[okla-lawman]

I hate to tell you this, but federal anything costs us money. Remember government doesn't have a penny that they didn't take from us with the end of a metaphorical gun.

I know that but much rather it be spent here than the millions we give away on welfare or too other countries.......

 

[PolarBear25]

I hate to tell you this, but federal anything costs us money. Remember government doesn't have a penny that they didn't take from us with the end of a metaphorical gun.

I know that but much rather it be spent here than the millions we give away on welfare or too other countries.......

Amen O-L..

 

[KOK5CY]

My oldman was a deputy for 30 + yr's and there were times i'd be with him and he would try and run a 28 and 29 and comm center would come back and verify the plate then say negative 29 and 28 not on file . He then run the VIN and 1 min later the 28 would come back . See what some officer's don't know is if that plate isn't found the VIN can be run and all the info is right there . There are back door's into any system ...I know i'll get told i don't know anything about how system's work but i'm here to say living with a well known deputy in the largest county in OK i know these thing's .

 

[Chaos703]

I hate to tell you this, but federal anything costs us money. Remember government doesn't have a penny that they didn't take from us with the end of a metaphorical gun.

I know that but much rather it be spent here than the millions we give away on welfare or too other countries.......

Wholeheartedly agreed (assuming you're not referring to the billions we're spending to protect us from a nuke with a turban).

 

[Chaos703]

KOK5CY,

You don't know anything about how system's work!

 

[car2back]

My oldman was a deputy for 30 + yr's and there were times i'd be with him and he would try and run a 28 and 29 and comm center would come back and verify the plate then say negative 29 and 28 not on file . He then run the VIN and 1 min later the 28 would come back . See what some officer's don't know is if that plate isn't found the VIN can be run and all the info is right there . There are back door's into any system ...I know i'll get told i don't know anything about how system's work but i'm here to say living with a well known deputy in the largest county in OK i know these thing's .

What are these "back doors" you speak of? No offense but if you asked most patrolmen what an RQ query was they'd say it's a place to buy ice-cream... to them OLETS is a magic computer program that only the lowly dispatcher needs to learn how to use.

What Osage deputy do you live with? What is "KOK5CY"? a ham call?

 

[Secret_Squirrel]

What are these "back doors" you speak of? No offense but if you asked most patrolmen what an RQ query was they'd say it's a place to buy ice-cream... to them OLETS is a magic computer program that only the lowly dispatcher needs to learn how to use.

What Osage deputy do you live with? What is "KOK5CY"? a ham call?

Yeah, no shizzle. I don't remember hearing about any "back doors". Most deputies wouldn't know how to actually run a query on anything. They might know how to call their dispatch and ask the dispatcher to do it for them, but that's something totally different.

KOK5CY isn't a valid ham call either.

 

[N5TWB]

What is "KOK5CY"? a ham call?

If it is what I think, it is an identifier of a "Registered Monitoring Station" from CRB Communications. They used to do this in the 70s as the one I received back then was KOK5AP. CRB Communications was an early publisher of various frequency lists.