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June 16, 2009, 01:51 PM ET
College Interns Develop Crime Web Site for Police
After Detective Sgt. Patrick Ryder was told it would take up to 10 months to build a continuously updated crime Web site for officers at the Nassau County Police Department in New York, he had an idea: Get the interns to do it.
“We had all this information, but we couldn’t get it out as real-time intel to the cops — the main consumer of the product,” Ryder told Newsday.
Claire Timko and Anthony Martini, criminal-justice interns who were from the State University of New York at Canton and Long Island University, respectively, were able to put together the Web site within two months. It includes outstanding warrants, the latest updates on gang activity, and safety alerts scrolling along the bottom of the site. Touch screens with access to the site have been installed throughout the county in every precinct, the district attorney’s office, and the sheriff’s office, as well as in police-vehicle laptops in two precincts.
Ryder said that approximately 40 warrant arrests have already been made based on information from the Web site, which has cost about $130,000. “It’s like we have our own news station,” he said, “pumping out continuous information bulletins for the cops.” – Marc Beja
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