Crime & Safety

Nappi's Evening of Edification

The acting police chief brought town councilors and police commissioners up to date on the ever-changing police headquarters.

Joe Santino decided it was time for his committee to see exactly what's been going on down at . Acting Chief Gaetano Nappi was more than happy to oblige.

Santino, chair of the Town Council's Public Safety Subcommittee, seemed to get what he asked for Wednesday evening when he and his peers got the lowdown from Nappi on how he has been transforming the police station into a "progressive" department of law enforcement.

The centerpiece of the discussion was the department's new $53,000 computer server, which has given the operation access to sophisticated technology that promises to crack down on police time while helping the environment.

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"I want to let everyone know and not leave anyone in the dark," Santino said. "The chief's done some tremendous upgrades here."

Santino and committee members Janice Donahue, Paul Thompson and Jim Dougherty along with Police Commissioners Fred Brow and Frank Piergrossi sat around a table in the department's commissioner's room to get Nappi's upgrade update.

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"We were in a critical situation because we had run out of (computer) storage space," said Nappi. The new Dell server that replaced the "obsolete" server has hundreds of times more memory, he said. No longer is memory measured in gigabytes. Now it's terabytes. One tera equals 1,024 gigas.

The department can now bring on license-plate readers and adopt the state's $53,000 e-ticket system. Both are designed to allow officers to process tickets and obtain information from their squad car computers, cutting down on the time it takes to perform those tasks at the station and saving a few trees by eliminating some paperwork.

Three patrol cars are slated to be outfitted with plate readers at $25,000 apiece. In answer to Donahue's question on how they work, Nappi explained they can scan a parking lot of cars in very little time (he didn't give a specific amount of time). The computerized scanning system can quickly detect cars that are unregistered and plates belonging to folks with outstanding warrants. The information is archived -- has "recall ability" -- so if a crime is committed in or outside of , say, and the cars were scanned that day, police could get a big boost in their investigation with the data, Nappi told the room.

"It's just an amazing tool," the acting chief said.

In fact, the cars at East Haven's Stop & Shop were scanned awhile back when Branford cops, whose cars are outfitted with plate readers, did a trial run here, Nappi said.

Having a super-duper computer server is also changing things on the home front. More cameras will soon be installed around the station and footage will be stored for much longer than the current 60 days, said Nappi. This can prove crucial in the cellblocks when prisoners intentionally harm themselves and then blame cops for their injuries, he said. With recorded data, their lies would be easily squashed. And it works the other way, too.

Longer-stored camera footage and additional cameras are also needed around the evidence room area, said Nappi. Recently, a "sizeable amount" of money  was taken from inside the temporary holding area, which state police are currently investigating, according to Deputy Chief John Mannion. Since the apparent theft was detected several days after the evidence cash was stashed away, Nappi said video was still available. However, the camera that monitors the evidence area is located in another room and is limited in what it can pick up.

Dougherty asked if a new policy will be written for the license-plate readers. Nappi said Mannion is on it as well as updating policies and procedures considered insufficient and outdated by both the federal Department of Justice in its preliminary civil report released last April, and most recently by the  Police Executive Research Forum.

Nappi then took the gang on a tour. Brow and Piergrossi—former East Haven cops—pointed to the large Dell computer server, the new training room, the freshly painted walls, the cleaned-up cells and the new floor in the radio room, remarking over and over on how "great" the place "now looks."

"We're making big strides here," said Nappi. "It's kind of a shotgun effect. There's a lot of stuff we have to install. That's what progressive departments do."


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