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Special City Council Meeting Monday,June 1,2015 Page 8 Chief Mathwig advised that another 2016 budget priority would be the conversion of squad cell phones to smart phone technology allowing officers to be more ef- fective and efficient in their ability to capture considerable intelligence infor- mation and information on victims of crimes (e.g. serial number information) that is not currently available to them in the field via the squads. At the request of Councilmember Willmus as to whether this would reduce an of- ficer's need for relying on laptop computers in the squad, Chief Mathwig re- sponded that it would not and reviewed the information shared on air or radio traf- fic on the main channel through dispatch, and that information available on the computer screen for the officer alone to cross-reference information in a more confidential way. At the request of Councilmember Laliberte, Chief Mathwig advised that currently investigators and administration had smart phones (two out of five units), and the need was to increase to a total of ten smart phones. As noted in his report, Chief Mathwig briefly reviewed challenges for the depart- ment in 2016 and beyond. Chief Mathwig reported on the continued pressure on police resources for commercial crime areas; and need to keep up with other tech- nology needs and officer training to capture and manage the data available to them as they performed their public safety role. At the request of Mayor Roe and in conjunction with the report from the IT De- partment, Chief Mathwig reported that improved laptops in squads are now in their fourth to fifth generation and increased law enforcement activity needs of the Roseville Department as well as other jurisdictions mandated the need for their ability to report, share and store data across the board with compatible software. Councilmember Willmus questioned how traffic stops on Snelling Avenue were tied back to Wal-Mart related to calls for service there. Chief Mathwig responded that officers had been tracking that activity specific to Wal-Mart as this area of new area of the community developed from its previous uses and/or vacant land requiring little police presence. Chief Mathwig advised that they did not track calls in this detail for those more-developed retail areas in the community at this time. At the request of Councilmember Laliberte, Chief Mathwig and Mayor Roe clari- fied the different budgetary needs outlined by the Police and IT Departments for laptops and software upgrades; with the expenses projected in the Police Depart- ment as a line item in their CIP, while the IT Department costs would involve support of that technology.