Town Council Approves Funding For Police Replacement Equipment

The Berlin Town Council recently passed an agenda item to purchase numerous items for the police department for replacements of things that have outlived their use or their warrantees.

"It's money for things we already had," Deputy Chief John Klett said. 

The town will purchase new tasers, which were off warrantee and were in short supply at times.

"We couldn't fix some of them and since they were off warrantee there were times when not everybody had them for their shift," Klett said. "That's obviously not ideal so we needed to get some new ones to replace the olds ones."

The department will also get a Life Scan. This is a fingerprint analysis tool that is extremely helpful. The unit complies with the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) used by police departments and United States federal agencies such as the CIA and FBI. 

"The one we have has outdated technology and is no longer covered by warrantee," Klett said. "We looked into possibly extending the warrantee or purchasing new software technology but it was cheaper to buy a brand new one that came with the latest technology. The price was negotiated and we actually had a credit so we purchased the additional maintenance warrantee."

Lastly, the department will receive some new laptop computers as part of a Technology Bond that was passed in 2009. 

"Those laptops get bounced around pretty good in those cars so we needed to replace some of them and this bond allows us to do that," Klett said. "They had a three-year warrantee so some are still covered and we'll keep those but the ones that are off warrantee will be replaced. 

"It seems like everything goes in a three-year cycle and this is the time to purchase this equipment."