St. Mary Approves Police Software Purchase
By MARK EVANS
mevans@stegenherald.com
St. Mary aldermen voted to spend $3,357 for national incident-based reporting system software for the police department and up to $350 to repair the effluent box at the wastewater plant at last Thursday’s meeting.
However, the aldermen tabled two other big purchases, in hopes of obtaining additional bids.
Mayor Carlton Wyatt pointed out that having a system like the Omnigo software requested by police chief Adam Bequette will become mandatory for police departments on Jan. 1.
“Pretty much all this does is compress all the information, since they’re going to be bringing us in with the FBI database,” Bequette said. “Also, if we’re not compliant, we don’t get federal funding or anything else from the state at all.”
It is a widely-used system.
“Ste. Gen. uses it, Perry County, pretty much everybody from Kansas City, down,” Bequette said. “The upstart costs are a little bit more, but you’re saving about 30 percent on office supplies and manpower hours, because I can be out in the car, doing my report, when nothing’s going on. Once I get a report, say I email it to the prosecutor, if I need a warrant signed off by a judge, I can get that signed fast and done, versus coming here and spending three hours of work while everybody else is out, just having a good old time [breaking laws].”
City prosecutor Jeremy Brauer would also have access to the database and could take information with him to court, Bequette said.
“We have a full record,” Bequette said. “It also does my racial profiling, so that at the end of the month, which I’ve got to keep up on and send to the state, and my crash reports, I just hit ’submit’ and it goes up to the highway patrol and I’m done, versus having to buy supplies, type this out, go tho this website, enter everything …they’ve got a lot of different systems. This is a compressed system; it does it all.”
Bequette showed the board a 30-page average stack of paperwork done on the typical arrest warrant. With this system, the information is stored and sent to all the appropriate parties. It also has health information.
“There’s a lot of information on there,” Bequette said. “We’re one of the few towns that don’t have it.”
After some more discussion, the board voted unanimously to purchase the software.
TWO PURCHASES LACKING BIDS
Purchasing new garage doors for the City Hall/police building was tabled. Wyatt said he would like to explore “a couple of other plans,” rather than spending the money immediately on new doors.
Three quotes had been obtained. One, from Overhead Door Co. of Southeast Missouri in Jackson, was for $2,156, one from Perryville Overhead Door for $1,904, and one from Myers Garage Door Company in Jackson, for $2,110.
“I’d like to wait a little bit on that,” Wyatt said. “We’re going to have to get one for sure. … I’ve got a couple of other plans I’m thinking about. I want to check on a couple of things.”
After some more discussion, the board voted to table the purchase.
It also voted to table the purchase of a new sewage control panel. Only one quote had been obtained, from Ressler & Associates of Ballwin, for $1,890.
It was agreed that another attempt needed to be made to obtain a couple of additional bids before making a decision.
EFFLUENT BOX TO BE FIXED
The less expensive option was then chosen to take care of a damaged effluent box for the wastewater system. The effluent box, or distribution box, transfers sewage from one part of the wastewater operation to the next.