Police has £25m mobile phone budget

Now here’s a contract worth winning. The British government is to spend £25 million on giving the coppers mobile phones.

In terms of publicity alone Apple and OpenMoku should be fighting it out to give the iconic police force their handsets and Orange, Vodafone etc. would be well advised to start chasing after this one.

It’s all a bid to cut red tape and give more officers access to information instantly when on patrol, saving on communication time.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found a PC quicker when it comes to accessing the internet. Quicker and easier still when it comes to finding what you want on a screen. Since the bobbies have access to a control room and people able to check the police database what benefit is there? Also, what are the police searching for online if it’s not a suspect?

According to Tech Radar:

The government has already spent a wad of cash on deploying 10,000 of said devices to 27 forces, but the new cash injection should swell that number to around 30,000 2010.

Albeit the blog is in the same situation as me as the police force still hasn’t found its stolen bike.

At first glance it seems a well thought through move so will probably make political sense but I’m not so sure it is. Would I rather have this or 750 more police (and that’s at a very high £33k salary each) on the streets / in control rooms with access to a police radio and the internet and the police database then I’d choose the latter.