PARIS – When it comes to police work, information is power.

That’s what Jon Tibbetts, an Oxford police detective lieutenant, has found, since his department linked up with the nearly 90,000 names in the database kept by the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department.

The database contains information about arrests, jail log activity and all calls for service handled through the county’s dispatching center.

If Tibbetts has a report of a burglary over the weekend, he can come in on Monday and check the computer to see if any other burglaries were reported in neighboring towns.

He can also do a general search, and pop up all the police activity that occurred over the weekend.

“It’s a huge data source,” he said. “For police work, it’s a place to start to gather your information.”

Tibbetts was on hand for a Wednesday meeting of municipal leaders about sharing services among the police departments of Oxford, Norway and Paris. He said the town of Oxford spent about $20,000 to purchase software that allows it to link up with the county’s database system.

“It’s going very well,” he said.

Norway and Paris are also interested in coming on board with the software, as are the towns of Dixfield, Bethel, Fryeburg and Mexico, according to Chief Deputy Jim Davis of the Sheriff’s Department.

Davis said he met Thursday with all of the police chiefs in Oxford County to talk about ways to strengthen communication among the departments and the dispatch center.

The police chiefs are hoping to secure grant money to buy mobile terminal databases, which can be used in cruiser laptop computers to get access to a name index.

They will also help to cut down on radio traffic, he said.

Most patrol officers have laptop computers in their cruisers. But because they lack a mobile terminal database, officers on patrol must call the dispatch center to obtain license information or other information.

Tibbetts said it will likely be several years before police will able to secure the mobile terminals through grant money.