Public-safety agencies plan wireless network

As Everett police Sgt. Boyd Bryant drives through his city's downtown, the laptop computer in his car beeps and blings as he connects and disconnects from a wireless network that covers several blocks.

After stopping, Bryant logs on to the city's servers, checks his e-mail and downloads a file.

Some hope police and other public-safety workers across Snohomish County will eventually be able to do what Bryant can do now in parts of Everett. The plan, say members of the Public Safety Technology Wireless Sub-Committee, is to lay wide blankets of a high-speed wireless network across the county's most populated areas.

The network would make public-safety workers more efficient and effective by enabling quick access to the Internet, police databases and other tools, the project's proponents say.

That's the dream for the group, made up of law-enforcement officials from around the county and headed by Lynnwood Deputy Police Chief Karen Manser.

For more than a year, the group has been meeting and discussing the project.

In March, the group is expected to select a company to create a plan for a broadband wireless network across parts of the county. The network would initially be available only to public-safety workers, but one day sections of it could be accessed by the public, Manser said.

Besides providing Internet access, the network would allow police officers to run complex searches, retrieve booking photos and file reports from their patrol cars.

From his car, Bryant can experience what this would be like. His car and about a dozen other Everett patrol cars are part of a federally funded pilot project that is accomplishing on a small scale what Manser's group wants to accomplish for other parts of the county.

Everett has four wireless-network blankets that cover some of the city's highest-crime areas. Through grants, Bryant hopes to add about 11 more blankets in the next several months and outfit about 100 more cars with the technology to access the network.

Bryant's goal is to eliminate the need for officers to drive back to the police station. In an informal survey, Everett found that its officers were spending about a third of their time driving to and from the station, including the time spent writing reports. That's time they could be policing, Bryant said.

Manser said the idea is to build something across the county that will mesh with what Everett has created.

Other counties and cities in the area are also looking at wide broadband wireless networks. The King County Police Chiefs Association has studied the possibility of a high-speed wireless network in its county and is looking for funding to build it, said Scott Somers, the special-operations chief for the King County sheriff.

But Manser hopes to be one of the first with such a network.

"We would really like this project to be a model project," she said.

Brian Alexander: 425-745-7845 or balexander@seattletimes.com