Crime & Safety

Greendale Police Launch New System That Will Improve Services

The new system will integrate police and fire as well as make records management more efficient.

The t launched a new records management system called ProPhoenix on Wednesday, which will make the police and fire departments respond faster and become more efficient in the community.

. The department had been using a systen called Enforcer, which had been in place since 1985. Little data was able to be drawn from Enforcer for analysis, reporting or documentation. The new system provides modern capabilities, including the ability to extract statistical information  to better work with other agencies and provide information about what is happening in Greendale.

Prior to the new system dispatchers would send an officer to a scene and if an ambulance was needed the officer would need to call the fire department. With the new system the fire department will be able to tell when they might be needed and prep for possible dispatch.

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The system will also be able to track the history of incidents at certain addresses. ProPhoenix has a GPS that can track every house, landmark and road, even down to the fire hydrants. Dispatchers will also be able to tell where police cars are at all times.

Right now most of the Milwaukee County agencies use this system, except for the North Shore and Milwaukee Police. Greendale’s new system is integrated with other agencies’ ProPhoenix systems, giving officers easy access to information held in another community.

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Previously, Greendale would have to call every agency to see if they had any background information on a prisoner. Now Greendale can look in the ProPhoenix system and pull out information from other agencies, so long as they are in the ProPhoenix network.

The system is also in the patrol cars and officers can enter the initial report from their cars. With the new system officers can save a substantial amount of time when booking a new prisoner.

“The guys are in heaven,” said Police Chief Bob Malasuk. “We booked a prisoner this morning that normally would take 30 minutes. They did it in 10 minutes.”

Malasuk said his staff spent months training. He credits Officer Tom Duhn and Dispatcher Jennifer Conte for taking on the task of setting up the new system.

“It’s going to make our job easier because in our old system if we wanted to search for something like the number of burglaries in an area it would take a while,” Conte said.

“In the new system we can search for burglaries in one area in a certain time frame…I’m pretty happy to have this because we’re one of the last ones to get this system and all the kinks have been worked out by other departments.”

The two were praised by the chief for their efforts.

“Since February they have been tasked with the responsibility of setting this up, doing the data entry, doing the database and making it the skeleton so that everything that we do works,” Malasuk said. “These two people worked tirelessly for months.”

Malasuk had his one-year anniversary in June as police chief. He said the number one thing that staff said they would like to see change in the department was the records management system.

“From what they had to where they are today it’s probably like going from a old VW bug to a Lexus,” said Jeff Reit of ProPhoenix and also a former Wauwatosa police captain.

In the future Malasuk hopes to add new system interfaces. For example, instead of having an officer physically take reports to the District Attorney’s Office they will be able to digitally transfer the reports over to them.

“My goal is to be completely ProPhoenixized.” Malasuk said. “I want all of my systems to be integrated together…Everything that I have deal with ProPhoenix has worked.   So I want to stay with what works.”

According to the Greendale Police Department ProPhoenix will improve the following:

  • Allow Greendale Police and Fire to more effectively work together.
  • Allow Greendale Fire to better work with other Milwaukee County Departments who at times provide assistance to Greendale.
  • Have the ability to share records, photos, investigations, resources, information, intelligence, etc. between police and fire departments county-wide, and with Waukesha and Racine Counties.
  • Eliminate redundancy of data entry.
  • Give the opportunity to save considerably by being “hosted” by another agency.
  • Will not have to purchase the extra hardware, servers, storage, pay for IT support, etc.


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