iPad plan for police aims to save time
iPads will be issued to hundreds of police officers in Staffordshire to slash time spent filling in forms under plans revealed today by a crime commissioner candidate.
Conservative county councillor Matthew Ellis wants to buy 300 iPads at a cost of around £120,000, arguing they will save 3,000 hours a week for frontline officers.
His calculations are based on data which shows Staffordshire Police processes 220,000 statements and incident reports a year.
Labour rival Joy Garner has dismissed the idea as a "gimmick" but Councillor Ellis insisted two pilot schemes provided evidence which supported it. During a trial in Avon & Somerset, a total of 538 hours were saved taking 326 statements while 241 hours were saved processing 500 statements in Hampshire.
Councillor Ellis said today: "I wasn't aware of the trials when I set out my ideas for policing here but experience has shown me that being more ambitious with the use of technology should free up police to do what they were trained to do.
"The reports show that my plans to get 3,000 extra frontline police hours in communities every week are possible. In fact I'd want to be even more ambitious than that across the wider criminal justice system so that even more time is released to actual policing."
Cash for the iPads, which start at £399 for the latest model, would come from reserves, he added. Staffordshire Police is trying to make savings of £38 million before 2015. The election for the £75,000-a-year crime commissioner role takes place on November 15.
