FROM ONE INNOVATION TO THE NEXT

George sees CARE as but one of several integrated systems in his charge and a natural outgrowth of Kleinknecht's interest in information automation and his vision of how the department should employ new technologies. "One of the first things we automated was all the arrest records," George recalled. It took an enormous amount of time to do so, and Kleinknecht—who keeps current on developments in police administration by reading, communicating with his peers, and participating in national police organizations—was aware that other police departments were taking steps to cut the amount of time given to records maintenance. Getting information into computers immediately after a person was booked was one of Kleinknecht's objectives for the new system.

"Sometime after that," George said, "I think around 1981, he wanted to be able to respond faster to calls for service from citizens. He wanted to get the information to the police officer so he could get there as fast as possible."

The existing system did not even begin to achieve this objective. Calls were recorded with paper and pencil. If the person taking the call did not recognize the address, she would consult a map book, find the area, look up the beat number, write all this down, and put the card in a track that went to the dispatcher. "He thought this took too long and was life-threatening," George said.

As it happened, installing computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) required very little innovation. George took Minneapolis' system and modified it to suit his purposes. "We are very satisfied with it," he reported. "It cut response time dramatically and yielded all kinds of management information that you could never get from the old system."

"This was where we started," George said. "Using CAD as a building block, we developed CARE."

In his reading, Kleinknecht came across a report that said doctors were using the telephone to dictate their case notes and, as a result, were saving significant amounts of time. He thought such a reporting system could be adapted to police work. "We had found out that a police officer could use up to 20 percent of his time writing police reports," George said.