Hollister Police Chief Bill Pierpoint plans to request funding
from the Hollister City Council for new software to store the
department’s records at the Dec. 16 Council meeting.
Hollister Police Chief Bill Pierpoint plans to request funding from the Hollister City Council for new software to store the department’s records at the Dec. 16 Council meeting.
The software favored by police, TracNet, has the capacity for electronic storage, crime analysis, evidence management and other reporting.
“It’s to manage all of our criminal activity within the department,” Pierpoint said.
After review by 27 members of the department, the HPD chose TracNet over a competing vendor, AbbeyGroup, whose software is used by the Morgan Hill Police Department. The HPD evaluated both companies’ software after day-long demonstrations of each.
The cost of TracNet would be $109,405 and may be spread over two fiscal-year budgets. The cost for Abbey Group’s software would be $122,500.
Pierpoint said other jurisdictions spend much more than TracNet’s cost to the city. Gilroy, for instance, spent more than $1 million for its police department’s current record-keeping software.
Department employees expressed a high level of dissatisfaction with the current system, Crossroads RMS, which missed a series of milestones this year from the HPD. That network included 36 laptop computers and 15 personal computers.
“It was not a stable platform,” Pierpoint said. “Officers would lose reports and have to go back and write reports.”
Pierpoint said HPD staff were overwhelmingly in favor of TracNet. In a checklist evaluation by the staff, the software scored 380 to 168 for EIS.
