PARIS – Police Chief David Verrier is striking out on his own and purchasing a communications software system that isn’t used by any other town in the county.
“Through my research,” he said Wednesday, “I think that I’ve found something that’s a better system for Paris and what we have here.”
Verrier said it will cost about $41,000 for the town to buy and install communications software made by Information Management Corp. of North Grafton, Mass. The software will replace an outdated system the department is using and make it easier for police officers to share basic information, run their own license queries and even complete incident reports.
But while Verrier is going his own road, towns from Norway to Dixfield are signing on to share software with the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office. Having more departments on the same system, said Norway Police Chief Rob Federico on Wednesday, will make it easier to share more information and help improve the towns’ chances of attracting federal homeland security dollars for future advances and upgrades.
Homeland security grants are getting harder to come by, Federico added. “Unless something changes, it just doesn’t make sense for Norway and Paris to go out on their own.”
Deputy Chief Jim Davis of the sheriff’s office said he is pleased that many towns are signing on to use the county system. He has said it would be too costly and risky for the sheriff’s office to consider changing software companies.
Davis thinks there would be a risk of losing thousands of names and incident reports stored under the Spillman system.
At a meeting April 6, he said, police chiefs from Bethel, Fryeburg, Dixfield, Norway, Mexico and Rumford all agreed “that the thing everybody would be working toward would be getting on the same software.”
Verrier said he missed that meeting due to the flu.
The town of Oxford has been using the Spillman system for about a year. Lt. Jon Tibbetts said he has been pleased with its performance. The software version used by Oxford is in a Windows format and is easy to use, he said.
While Verrier has said the Information Management Corp. software can share with and retrieve information from the Spillman system, Tibbetts was skeptical. He said that if more departments use Spillman software, more information can easily be exchanged.
Verrier also has argued that many larger municipalities in the state are converting to the Information Management Corp. software, including South Portland and Kennebunk.
Either way, Verrier said, there are no hard feelings.
Of his own decision, he added, “I’m pretty excited about this. I think it’s going to help make us do our jobs a lot better.”
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