CHESTERFIELD— The police are about to get wired.

Thanks to a hefty donation from the former Madison County Prosecutor and some resourceful Web surfing by the town’s clerk treasurer, five new notebook computers are installed in five of the Chesterfield Police Department’s eight vehicles.

Those five computers will soon be wired to the Indiana Data and Communication System (IDACS), a database Hoosier law enforcement agencies can use to run driver’s license numbers and get other records.

“We can be in Evansville and talk back here to guys in the cars. Anybody that’s connected to the system, we can talk to them,” said Chesterfield Chief of Police Jamie Kimm. “When we’re totally up and running it is going to be 100 times easier than it is now.”

The dispatchers can send an officer on a call without ever getting on the radio. Though the system is commonplace in larger cities, it’s a big advantage many small town police forces don’t have, according to Kimm.

“There’s a lot of sensitive information passed back and forth on the radio, so, as far as safety goes, it’s a big step,” Kimm said.

Before, for Chesterfield, an officer who’d just pulled over a car would have to radio dispatch, who would have to call the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, who in turn had to check the driver’s records and respond to the dispatcher, who then had to radio the officer. That could take as long as five minutes at each stage, depending on how busy each office was, according to Kimm.

Now, all that will happen at the push of a button. “When we stop a car we’ll know who that car belongs to before we even go up there,” he said.

It was especially meaningful last week when Kimm was interviewed for this story. The chief, with five full-timers and 20 reserves under him, said he saw a local newspaper’s report about an officer, formerly from Pendleton, who was shot to death during what began as a routine traffic stop in South Carolina.

The state of Indiana spent millions to set up the system, with hundreds of towers around the state transmitting information and creating a network to streamline law enforcement communication.

“We get connected to that for no cost,” Kimm said. “The state has footed the bill for the towers, the computers and everything.”

Through IDACS, an officer can send an electronic message to another officer, to the station or even another department.

“Someday the (driver’s) picture will come up. (Captain Steve Mullen) said we’ll be able to see that in the next few years, which I think is great,” Kimm said.

But getting it done is a long, slow process, according to Kimm.