Grant Co. upgrades law enforcement software

MOSES LAKE – Grant County, with the assistance of the Multi-Agency Communications Center – 911, switched its law enforcement reporting software at the beginning of 20. The new software is a cloud-based platform with more assets and less crashes than the previous program which the county has been using since 1996, according to Moses Lake Police Department Captain Jeff Sursely. 

“We're in the process of transitioning from Spilman to 365Labs, which is a monumental improvement and modernization of our dispatching record system,” Sursely said. “We'll be moving to a cloud-based system, which has a lot more functionality, but because it is a design build, it is taking time to get all the functions up and running and find all the bugs, because it's a brand-new system.” 

The new program will be adapted by all agencies in the county including EMS, fire, law enforcement and the prosecutor's office. Sursely said the transition is going well but it will take time for the agencies to fully learn the new program.

“If everybody's patient, we're going to end up with a completely better product for not just the agencies,” Sursely said. “But, also for all the citizens and the entire county people that they utilize, any emergency service, fire, prosecutor office, because it's all going to talk together.” 

The system, according to Sursely, provides the agencies with modules to communicate with one another and removes the need to recreate work because it’s cloud-based. There are no server downtimes, the system is accessible anywhere in the world, officers can ask for assistance more easily and it will take some pressure off dispatchers because of the tools within the system.  

“The best way to describe it is going from a '60s Ford Maverick to a Tesla,” Sursely said.  

With the upgrade though, there will be a learning curve for the departments which means MLPD, alongside other agencies are working out bugs and figuring out the new software. For example, MLPD is learning how to export police records into documents for the media, meaning a delay in publishing police reports. 

“Everyone's being trained on it,” Sursely said. “It'll just take a second and then some things have to happen on the front end to provide me what appears to be is going to be a report I can (release). But I don't know that until we get everything done on the front end. Then it's going to take a little bit to tour through all the kinks and figure out exactly how to run each process.” 

Sursely does not have an anticipated timeline on when the technology will be fully figured out; however, he said the department is working together with MACC-911 to make sure it is as soon as possible. 

The switch-over is also causing issues with publishing the list of people booked into the Grant County Jail, according to Grant County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Kyle Foreman.  

“We have people who are working to integrate so that the data management system, of course, holds all of our inmate information and all that,” Foreman said. “So with the new system, we have people working on it come up with a way to transfer that information so it's publicly accessible.” 

GCSO is also unsure when the system will be figured out. 

“I get the impression that they're going to truly want to take our time to get it right, but I was not given a timeline,” Foreman said. 

    Grant County will be the first to switch to 365Labs, a new law enforcement software developed by the Multi-Agency Communications Center – 911. The software will take some pressure off of MACC-911 because it allows for agencies to communicate, create new cases and more without the assistance of MACC-911.