By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

RUMFORD – Patience with computers was a limited commodity Wednesday afternoon at the Rumford police station.

A technology upgrade started on Friday sent eight years worth of their computerized information – thousands of arrests, reports, mug shots and more – to a computer system in St. Louis, Mo.

By Wednesday morning, everything from 1998 to June 2003 was back where it should be. But that wasn’t much help to officers trying to finish reports they’d started this year and late last year.

“It’s really been frustrating, because we’re so far behind on reports,” Detective Lt. George Cayer said Wednesday afternoon.

“We need the last three months in there, so we can finish our cases,” he added.

The unexpected problem and other glitches occurred when the department was ready to go live with an updated version of its 1998 records-management and computer-aided dispatch software, Patrolman Douglas Maifeld said late Wednesday afternoon.

Maifeld and Cayer are the department’s computer buffs. They and new Chief Stacy Carter were trained last August during a three-day course on the upgrade at Information Technologies Inc. in St. Louis.

Maifeld developed an extensive PowerPoint program to teach other Rumford officers how to use the software program.

To become familiar with the program, a trial-and-error version was used.

On Friday, the St. Louis company extracted all eight years worth of data from the old program, installed the new update and began sending the extracted data back.

The whole process was supposed to be done that day.

“We haven’t lost the data, but we haven’t been able to access it, because it’s in the process of being transferred back. That’s why we’re way behind,” Cayer said.

“It’s been quite stressful,” Maifeld added.

But, what happened Friday is better than what occurred in 1998 when the department had new software installed before switching to the ITI software.

Prior to 1998, the department was using a DOS-based program and typewriters. One day, Detective Lt. Wayne Gallant came into work right after the software had been installed, only to learn that all of their computerized records from the mid-1980s to 1998 had been erased.

“The system had been wiped clean by the computer software people, because they thought we weren’t interested in that part of the system,” Cayer said.

Maifeld said there was no way of converting the old data, but all was not totally lost. They still had the handwritten and hand-typed paper copies.

“Now, we do a daily backup to make sure we don’t lose any information,” Cayer said.

The department is upgrading now to use new mobile technology with five soon-to-be-received laptop computers for cruisers.

Using the new software and laptops, officers will be able to work on their reports from the field while maintaining visibility at problem areas, and send and receive information to and from their dispatcher without returning to the station. They will also be able to get information from other agencies across the nation and Canada.

But until the glitches are worked out, Maifeld has been the patience cheerleader.

“Hopefully, we’ll be back up on Thursday. I keep telling them that change is good. It’s a nice system, it’s just taking longer to upload eight years worth of massive data,” he said.