T-Mobile help police the highlands

Fife Constabulary is responsible for policing an area of Scottish territory that borders the River Tay at its northern most edge and the River Forth on its southern boundary.

Eastern Fife is predominantly rural while Central and West Fife has large urban and industrial areas. Ensuring good communications between the 1,000 officers and 500 administrative staff was a major problem.

The solution was to extend their existing contract with T-Mobile that current stood at 150 handsets. Fife Constabulary also signed up for 20 T-Mobile Communication Centres, the single PC card with simple software interface that seamlessly connects users to the fastest available network – GPRS, 3G or Wi-Fi. “We had some demanding requirements but mobile working with T-Mobile and the Communication Centre has provided everything we need and we are now reaping some very significant benefits.”

“We wanted to quicken the speed with which crime scene investigations could begin evidence processing, improve intelligence sharing when policing major incidents and provide senior officers with access to critical information when they were out of the region. The constabulary has a deep pool of experienced officers, who are subsequently requested for secondment projects, often in distant locations. We also wanted to ensure they had reliable communications with headquarters from the moment they arrived at their destination,” said Bill Parker, Head of Communications and IT, Fife Constabulary.

The Communication Centre was also deployed to senior officers who frequently travel to cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham. Each officer carried laptops configured to provide secure remote access to information in Fife Constabulary databases. During the 2005 G8 conference of global leaders in Gleneagles, Fife Constabulary was one of the police forces tasked with intelligence gathering on protesters and monitoring movements of disruptive elements moving through the county. Using the Communication Centre they could make sure that the latest intelligence was made available to officers on the ground.