Brad Kobishop

Olson , to approve the out-of-state travel for Officer Barry Holm and Officer Brad Kobishop to attend Mobile Data Grant training at a cost in addition to the training grant.

That feature will come in handy on calls involving complaints about noisy parties thrown by young people, said Brad Kobishop, an Onalaska officer who has been working on the new computer system since April.

Some young party throwers, Kobishop explained, have gotten savvy and set up police scanners to monitor calls.When they hear a dispatcher calling for an officer to investigate their party, they break up the shindig or tone it down enough so police have no cause to break it up.

Of course, the new silent dispatching system will mean police scanner fans will have a lot fewer calls to monitor, but the purpose behind the mobile data system is not to deprive people of their entertainment.As Kobishop and Onalaska Police Chief Randy Williams explained, the idea is to make officers more efficient, giving them more time on the street to serve the public and deter crime.
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In fact, both Williams and Kobishop believe Onalaska will have the first department in the state equipped for field reporting.

Onalaska's system also departs from the standard in its use of cellular communication to connect through virtual private networks to county dispatchers, the department's record-keeping database, the National Crime Information Center database, the state Crime Information Bureau, motor vehicle records and the state's Sex Offender Registry.

Most other departments use radio frequencies or satellite hookups to connect in-car computers to other computers.Those methods have an advantage in their coverage, Kobishop said, because there are very few places where a connection can't be made.

The cellular connection used by the Onalaska police will not work in 5 percent to 10 percent of the locations in the city, mostly adjacent to bluffs, Kobishop said, but in exchange for that inconvenience the officers can download data much more quickly.It's like the difference between dial-up Internet access and a high-speed line.
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The Onalaska Police Department was lucky to have Kobishop in place to help shepherd in its next technological step.A department member since 1985, Kobishop has a degree in computer science and runs his own computer consulting business.

"This was right up my alley," he said."I'm having fun with this."

Not all of the Onalaska officers will take to the new system as well as he has, Kobishop allowed, and it probably will take a few months before all officers are getting the most out of the mobile data system."We try to make it as foolproof as possible," he said.Still, he added, "there's a learning curve.

But when they do see what it can do, he predicted, the officers will be amazed."I think the officers will be real impressed with the amount of information available to them."

In addition to the NCIC - "Bad guys from anywhere in the world show up there," Kobishop said - and other databases, officers will also have city maps, statutes and ordinances at their fingertips.

Brad Kobishop has worked as an officer for 19 years.He went through the field sobriety training several years ago, but he's taking a refresher course."The big thing is repetition, repetition, repetition.It's standardized field sobriety testing.So, we want to be standard and all perform it the same way every time," said Kobishop.