BILOXI -- "This is an extremely complicated, complex project," he said. "The decisions on this project were never made in a vacuum."
"The intent of the project was not only providing that mobile data capabilities," he said, "but it was these agencies being able to share information - a world, a gold mine of intelligence in the jail system."
The basis by which the MASP was founded - an "open source paradigm" linking multiple jurisdictions under one jail system, entering case files and sharing information - was unparalleled by any other agency in the country, said Cecil Burge, a vice president at USM.
Former Harrison County Sheriff Payne, who helped conceive the program, did not return messages seeking comment.
In the MASP grant proposal, Payne said he was tired of his deputies calling neighboring jurisdictions for record checks on criminal John Doe.
"That's about as real-time as a slow boat to China," he said.
His correspondence with the Justice Department and state legislatures ultimately helped secure millions of tax dollars for the computer system, a system blamed in part for overcrowding at the Harrison County jail.
The federal computer project, which is administered at the University of Southern Mississippi, launched in 2002 and promised an information-sharing network linking Coast public safety and other government agencies by February 2005. "We're not creating new technology," MASP Director Julian Allen said. "We're taking state-of-the-art technology and addressing the needs of mostly rural agencies, which most of Mississippi is." MASP officials have spent $16 million of taxpayers' money, but there is no wireless network linking the Coast. MASP officials have decided to model a system after a Florida sheriff's office. It won't be until 2010 that the system is functioning, Allen said. "No, it does not meet their expectations," he said of his users. "It does not meet my expectations."
- MICHAEL A. BELL
E-Mail
Print
@Nyx.CommentBody@