In Silicon Valley, even the cops are high-tech.

Laptop computers linked to police station's Intranet are standard in most squad cars and nearly every department has a Web site. But down in Santa Clara, the long arm of the law is going wireless.

Right now the Santa Clara Police Department is field-testing a handful of PDAs (personal digital assistants) that the department says should make their jobs easier by reducing the time used on writing tickets, accident reports and other routine police work.

Lt. Roger Luebkeman, who says he hates extra paperwork, came up with handheld devices as a solution.

"Our goal is to replace pad and paper, and free our officers up from spending so much time retyping the same information," says Luebkeman.

The concept of using PDAs in police work is not new. Just down the way, Palo Alto police use them in the field. However, Santa Clara's Department is the first to go wireless.

Santa Clara uses the SPT-1740 made by Symbol Technologies. It runs on the Palm operating system and uses FileMaker Pro for the Web-enabled database.

"It's easier to learn the shorthand on the Palm than mess with the laptops, because they rely on handwriting recognition software," says Luebkeman. "We also had to specially order the rugged Symbols because everything off the shelf would break if an officer accidentally dropped it."

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Lt. Luebkeman also added a magnetic scanner that downloads information from California driver's licenses and a barcode scanner to track evidence.

"With the barcode scanner, I can track a piece of evidence from the station to the courthouse," says Luebkeman. "The information is automatically updated on our Web site, which lets us know who is handling the case and all about it."

TO (FILEMAKER PRO)TECT AND SERVE

Lt. Luebkeman says a key to the success of the project is using FileMaker Pro as a common database.

Because FileMaker is well-known database software, Lt. Luebkeman says the Department can invest in any handheld device.

"When I first started this project, I had the Apple Newton in mind as the platform," says Luebkeman. "The problem was that by the time I got the project together, the Newton was gone."

And because FileMaker is also Web-enabled, Luebkeman says he only needed a small amount of HTML experience to get the system online.

"But I'm not a programmer," Luebkeman quips.

Right now motorcycle patrol officer Randy Sheleman is field-testing the unit. Eight more should be online by next year. Eventually the device will be standard issue for the Department's 150 officers.