The capital budget will also support critical information technology projects for the Department. These include enhancements to the new computer-aided dispatch system that we will install this calendar year, as well as a new records management system and improved crime analysis and field reporting. The field reporting project is one that I am particularly excited about. It will allow our officers to enter and submit incident reports from mobile data computers in the field, which means they won’t have to travel to the station for this task. This capability has enormous potential for reducing the amount of time that officers spend traveling back and forth from their PSA to the district station, and for increasing their time and visibility on the PSA. Planning and development of this system are already under way, supported by current capital improvement funds. The FY2000 capital budget will also allow us to upgrade our radio communications network, expanding the number of secure channels and eliminating congestion on some of our radio channels.
Maximizing Our Resources
That covers the highlights of the Police Department’s operating and capital budgets proposed for FY2000. Incorporated within all the spreadsheets and charts and graphs that spell out our budget are a variety of initiatives that are not necessarily big in terms of dollar amounts, but which are enormous in terms of their impact. In closing this morning, I want to share with you one such program. It’s called Partnerships for Problem Solving. And it is a unique effort to provide not just our police officers, but also our partners in the community with the tools and training they need to solve problems and build communities.
This program has been in the planning stage for several months now. Beginning in May, we will go live. Under the program, teams of specially trained police officers and community volunteers will be going out into each of our 83 PSAs. They will bring together PSA officers, residents, business people, ministers, community leaders and other stakeholders. These groups will gather in church basements, school auditoriums, community centers and other neighborhood locations. And they will sit down, roll up their sleeves, and learn to work with one another at identifying and solving the problems in their communities.
Technically, we are calling these training sessions. But in reality they will be much more. They will be opportunities for police officers to meet the residents they serve. For neighbors to discover one another. For a business person on one end of a PSA to network with a colleague on the other end. These sessions will be opportunities to develop strong, grass-roots, public safety partnerships that will remain intact long after the immediate crime problem has been solved.
Mayor Williams has spoken often and eloquently about the need for the community not to sit up in the stands and watch its government at work, but to get suited up and get down on the field and help move the ball forward. That is the essence of our community policing model here in the District of Columbia—police and community working together to reduce crime. And it is certainly the guiding principle of the Partnerships for Problem Solving initiative. Through the use of community volunteers and collaborative partnerships between police and communities, we are able to take a small investment in Department resources and create powerful crime-fighting partnerships throughout our city. It is these partnerships that will help us make Washington, DC, an even safer, more livable city in the year 2000 and beyond.
