Warren County law enforcement agencies and 911 officials are making strides toward resolving an earlier dispute about whether costs for data entry should be shared, 911 Administrator Amy Ellard said.
Ellard said 911 board members and law enforcement officials have reached an agreement to share the input of data between them.
“We would put in things like orders of protection and warrants,” she said. “Anything of a critical nature, our clerical support would do that.”
Law enforcement, on the other hand, would take less urgent information, such as stolen property, conceal and carry permits and sex offenders.
The agreement would allow 911 to offer some data entry to law enforcement at no charge, Ellard said.
Wright City Police Chief Doug Saulters said he thinks it is a good compromise for both sides.
“They will still do our warrants, and we will do things like stolen property,” he said. “We’ll utilize our records clerk and also train our evidence detective to make these entries so it won’t cost us anything in manpower.”
In July, 911 officials offered a cost-sharing proposal that would require law enforcement agencies to pay 911 a total of $61,741.47 in 2013 to continue entering and maintaining entries into the Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement System, or MULES.
The statewide database is used by law enforcement to look up arrest warrants, missing persons, stolen property, sex offenders and other police-related information.
Ellard had cited in a letter to law enforcement this year that due to “the ever-increasing cost incurred,” the 911 board had decided to discontinue entering and maintaining MULES entries after Dec. 31 because MULES entries are not a core function of the 911 agency.
In the same letter she offered to continue the service if the police agencies agreed to share the cost.
Larger law enforcement entities, such as the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, were rattled by the proposal because it required them to pay according to the percentage of entries entered into the database each year. In 2011, the sheriff’s department had 3,994 entries, or 75 percent of the total, which would require it to pay around $46,500.
Ellard said the both parties hope to have the agreement finalized by the end of the year.
