In addition to guns and badges, city cops will soon have another powerful crime-fighting tool: a new computer system designed to track bad guys.
The new DataShare system, announced yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg, aims to speed information on suspects and known criminals to cops, prosecutors and probation officers with an eye toward stopping crime before it happens.
NYPD commanders, for instance, will get a heads-up anytime a violent offender is released from jail into their precincts, while probation officers will be able to check instantly on arrests faced by their wards.
"DataShare will, in short, get much more of the right information to the right people at the right time," Bloomberg said in a speech yesterday before the Citizens Crime Commission. "We think the result will be a quicker arrest and a safer city."
City officials explained that while various branches of the city's criminal justice system have been sharing information on offenders for years, the process is often slow, involving phone calls, faxes and, frequently, a laborious search through printed files.
Now, all information will be stored in a central data bank, and cops and prosecutors will be able to quickly retrieve customized, up-to-the-minute information.
"We haven't been able to do that before with a click of a mouse," explained John Feinblatt, Bloomberg's criminal justice coordinator.
Officials said they hoped the new system would continue to push crime down in the city, where homicides already are down 14% in the first four months of this year.
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