The Cheney Police Department and Eastern Washington University may have parted ways over dispatch services, but when it comes to maintaining law enforcement data, they’re still buddies.
At its Jan. 12 meeting, the Cheney City Council approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the university’s police department and Cheney’s to provide storage service for Eastern’s ACCESS data. Documents such as Cheney Municipal Court warrants and protection orders, stolen vehicle records, outstanding arrest warrants, missing person reports and other ACCESS-qualified data will be forwarded to Cheney’s communications department for entry and storage into its ACCESS system.
EWU police will continue to have access to various police reports stored in Cheney’s system, and Cheney will continue to “store, backup, secure and maintain” EWU records on its servers.
Essentially, the city is acting simply as a place for the university to store its records until it can acquire similar services of its own — for only $20,400 a year.
“It’s just a parking fee if you will until they get it (data) removed in the next couple of years,” Cheney Police Chief John Hensley told the council.
Responding to a question from Councilwoman Teresa Overhauser, Hensley said that Cheney and EWU’s data would be “co-mingled,” but that off-site backups are in place. There is now legal liability to the city should that information somehow be lost.
“Is this a good deal for us?” Councilman Doug Nixon asked.
“It’s a very good deal,” Hensley said, adding he expected the contract to last several years as Eastern doesn’t have the time or expertise yet to move the information.
“We did something similar to this two years ago and it took over 800 labor hours to perform,” Hensley said.
Later during staff reports, Hensley briefed the council on efforts to clear streets of vehicles in order for city plows to clear not only accumulated snow but prepare for any future snow event. Over 30 cars have been tagged and subsequently impounded when owners failed to move them, Hensley said, and there are many more to do.
To handle the task, the department will divide the city into sectors and assign two officers to patrol a sector and notify residents who use the streets to park their vehicles of the need to have them moved to accommodate plows. Residents who appear to be using the streets for storage of boats, RVs and other vehicles will also be contacted and given 72 hours notice of the need to move their vehicle.
Hensley said this will provide the department with an inventory of residents using Cheney streets as vehicle storage, but also be fair by giving them sufficient warning.
Tuesday’s council meeting was also the first meeting for new Councilman Dan Hilton, who ran unopposed in the November election for the seat vacated by the retiring Graeme Webster. Hilton, along with re-elected members Doug Nixon, Jill Weiszmann and Ryan Gaard were all sworn into office.
Gaard is also newly elected, having been appointed in October 2014 to fill the seat vacated by former council member Bob Stockton.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
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