business profile
Streamlining Huber & Associates’ Enterpol
ost people don’t know it, but booking someone into jail is a lot of work. Filling out reports is a time-consuming process that requires transferring the same information — such as name and address — to multiple sheets of paper. The Enterpol Solution for Public Safety changes that. A computer programmer in Canada originally wrote the Enterpol software. After his brother, a police officer, came home night after night complaining about having to write the same information over and over again every time he filled out a report, the programmer wrote a records management application to streamline the process and save time. He also wrote a dispatch management system to work in conjunction with the records management software. Huber & Associates bought the Canadian company in 2001 and developed a third application, the jail management system. Today, the Enterpol Solution includes three major components: Enterpol Records Management System, or RMS; Enterpol Jail Management System, or JMS; and Enterpol Computer Aided Dispatch, or CAD. Each piece of software can be used individually, but they’re also set up to pass information back and forth among applications. Additional interfaces make electronic finger printing, mapping and other functions simpler and more coordinated. “In law enforcement, there is a lot of reporting that has to be done, and everything has to be recorded for things like the court system and to track evidence,” says Ken Enloe, director of marketing and business development for Huber & Associates. “Our whole goal is to eliminate duplicate entry. Once information is captured, we don’t want anyone to have to enter it again, and that is why our software can pass information back and forth.” The Enterpol software, which is currently being used by more than 100 law enforcement agencies, is designed to add ease and accuracy to each phase of the law enforcement process. As soon as the phone rings in a dispatch center, CAD kicks in. Caller identification information from the phone company pops up for the dispatcher, and from then on, all the information is put into CAD. “When the dispatcher determines that the officer is done working on the incident, the dispatcher clears the case and pushes it over into RMS,” Enloe says. “All the dates, addresses and other information associated with the call are pushed into the incident report, so the officer doesn’t have to reenter that information.” JMS then tracks everything that happens with an inmate from the time he or she is booked into jail until he or she is released. Information on cell assignments, medical issues, visitors, phone calls and even commissary
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By Lauren Sable Freiman
76 | March/April 2012