Trinsic interviewed by Fox 7 News - Economy Hurting Police (6/27/09)
myFOXaustin (AUSTIN) - The bad economy isn't just affecting larger police departments. Smaller ones, like the Sunrise Beach Village Police Department in Llano County, are struggling as well.
In the middle of town, a welcome sign greets the 900 full time residents. On weekends, that number jumps to 3000 because of this...Lake LJB.
The police department has a boat but rarely uses it.
Other agencies patrol the waters because the department is short staffed and it has other priorities.
Chief Ben Ablon says, "we've had them breaking into houses, flat screen TVs are a big item and we had 3 houses hit in one night."
Besides the Chief, there is one full time officer and two part time officers to handle the spike in property crimes. Chief Ablon says, so any office delays, like working on a slow computer, hinders officers from doing police work.
Ablon says, "the time i spend in here trying to transfer data from an old computer is time I'm not on the street available to the citizens."
He also says his computer is so slow, "I can actually hit the bottom to tell it to open word and after waiting about 10 minutes, go get the old forms where you fill in the blanks by hand, make copies, come in here, fill in 5 or 6 of them by hand, and complete it before word ever opened."
That's where Trinsic Technologies comes in.
The Austin company found out about the situation and came to the rescue.
Founder Art Powell says,"a lot of municipalities are having trouble with their budgets and I can't think of anything more important than law enforcement."
A gift Chief Ablon says he appreciates.
"They're willing to step up and help us and they don't live here, they don't have a real tie to the community other than they just heard the story and just wanted to help."
Another private citizen donated two of the department's new radios.
The new technology allows the chief to focus on police issues...like asking the city council for an additional officer position.
Something that some say will be an uphill fight for this small town department.
