JCF impressed by Campion App

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

THE Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is impressed by a BlackBerry application software developed with four young men of Campion College to deal with road traffic offences.

The youngsters, Nicholas Rance, Danhue Moodie, Riteshi Reddy, all 17 and Julian Ingledew, 18, with the assistance of their computer science teacher Lavare Henry, developed the application software as a part of the Ministry of Education's Blackberry Developers Competition.

They placed first in the Best Government Application category and second in the High School category.

The application is designed to be used by police officers dealing with traffic checks to improve efficiency.

The JCF was particularly intrigued by the Ananda Alert Missing Children feature of the application, which includes name and pictures of all missing children. The date they were last seen and age are also included.

"This is useful for police officers to just be on the lookout for these kids," Reddy said.

It includes capabilities for an offender search as well as vehicle search, using the licence plate numbers. So where a police officer would radio in to the control centre to make checks, they would be able to check immediately on the BlackBerry smartphone.

Reddy said, "The app is extremely secure in that it travels through Research in Motion (RIM) servers which are encrypted and their own personal encryption on the app so the password is encrypted before it's sent out."

However, the JCF, through Fiscal Services Limited (FSL) already has a similar application done which is now in the pilot stage and is expected to be out by March.

This software is able to do motor vehicle searches which provides all the information for that vehicle including insurance and fitness expiration dates. Traffic tickets and driver's licence searches can also be done using that application.

Angela Patterson, director of Corporate and Special Services in the JCF, said the applications will greatly improve the efficiency with which police officers deal with traffic-related crimes or queries.

"It is unfortunate that we have gone so far ahead, but what we have noticed in there is that there are some features which we had not contemplated so a discussion will be had," she said.

She said the idea will be to incorporate features of the youngsters' application, specifically the Ananda Alert feature, into theirs.

— Denise Dennis

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JCF impressed by Campion App