The Cranbury Township Police Department recently installed a new records management system that will not only cut down paperwork time for police by more than half, but will also help keep the community safer, according to officials.

In just about five months, Lt. Franklin Dillane presented the idea purchasing Enforsys Police Systems Inc., negotiated the price, had it installed and started getting officers trained in time for the Jan. 1 launch.

“I can’t say enough about what he did in every way to secure this system for us,” said Police Chief Rickey Varga. “It was through his diligence and his hard work that we were able to bring in the project at a cost that was beneficial to us. He did a fantastic job from beginning to end, getting the system up and running.”

The new system has several benefits, including allowing officers to work from their cars, all of the state forms already in the record keeping system and the automatic transferring of data to each form within an incident, according to Dillane. Cranbury police also now have a computer automated dispatch system for dispatchers to assign calls.

“It’s dual purposing. They can still do their reports and they can still be present in an area where we know there may be a problem,” Varga said.

With the old records system, called Cody, police could not work on reports from their cars, Dillane said. After arriving on a scene they would have to take hand written notes and then go back to police headquarters to complete the report.

At headquarters they would have to fill in forms on two to three different systems, duplicating information put into the systems because they were not linked, Dillane said, noting the old system did not have any of the mandated state forms.

With Enforsys, officers can immediately start filling out their report when they arrive on the scene, and that information is automatically filled out on all of the forms, so efforts are not duplicated, Dillane said

“Now their office is no longer headquarters, their office is their vehicle,” Varga said.

The new system is also connected to a Middlesex County database that allows officers to search key words to help connect crimes throughout the county, according to Dillane.  

The cost of Enforsys was just over $80,000, but Cranbury police were able to purchase it at least $30,000 cheaper, Varga said. 

“This was a system that we felt really met our needs,” Varga said.

As an administrator, Varga said he looks forward to having a better way to track hours in the Detective Bureau, which was difficult on the old system. Varga said the benefit of Enforsys is that it has time stamps built in, so he can see where more time is being spent within the department, and where resources need to be most focused. 

“It benefits the community in that the officers are out there, they’re present, even if they’re sitting on the side of the road in a residential area, there’s still that presence and that deterrent from anything else happening,” Varga said.