For the past six months, patrol cars like the one Bahlmann drives have been outfitted with laptop computers using wireless digital communications software linked to a central database. The equipment is now in law enforcement vehicles throughout the county.

"This gives us a comprehensive suite of tools that'll help take the guesswork out of our jobs," said Dean Cox, the county's emergency services director. "The reality is, as fast as we're growing here, it's hard to stay on top of it. The number of calls that we're handling daily is growing exponentially with the population."

The new system features wireless access to police records back to 1995, outstanding warrants, driver's license and registration information, maps and building configurations. Each vehicle also will be equipped with a global positioning system for use with maps completed by each city and the county.

Everyone logged on to the mobile dispatch system will know where officers are and their status, with all of the information updated and stored in real time. Two servers will provide redundancy to safeguard the information.

"Seven or eight years ago when we responded to a problem at a residence, we wouldn't know what we were going into," said St. George Police Capt. Bruce Graham. "Now we can look up the history of the residence or person and make better decisions."

In those days, he said, officers would check a "cheat sheet" of suspect names clipped to the car visor or pick a fellow officer's brain to find out if danger was ahead.

"We have over 100,000 names in that database now," Graham said. "Before, we would have to go back and forth with dispatch and ask a lot of questions. Now we can check everything right on screen through this wireless technology. It saves a lot of time and ensures accuracy."

The system is also capable of storing photos, fingerprints and other identifiers commonly used by law enforcement during investigations.

"I can stay in my assigned area longer, write and file my reports on the laptop, and be available to the people who need me," Bahlmann said. "We work under the same structure as before, but now we're able to know who we've got in front of us without saying everything over the air."

And that gives Washington County's law enforcement community an advantage when it comes to fighting crime and keeping an ever-increasing number of residents safe, Cox said.

"It's really important for our bedroom communities, because they'll have the same capabilities as the rest of the county through this state-of-the-art system," he said. "It increases our ability to respond to any type of hazard, and that's a big selling point."

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E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com