LNO Past History News July 2007, Chuck Tinsman Named Officer of the Year

In a recent lunch cookout ceremony at the Justice Center, Chief Tommy Ingram announced, “Congratulations to Colleyville Police Department Officer of the Year, Chuck Tinsman!”

Chief Ingram commented, “Chuck was selected as Officer of the Year by unanimous supervisor vote for his level of performance during the last year and his outstanding job of handling the new mobile digital video system project.”

Along with his wife, Amanda, Officer Tinsman’s parents made a surprise appearance at the event; traveling 700 miles from Illinois to attend.  Other city officials who attended were City Manager Bill Lindley, Assistant City Manager Kelly Cooper and Elise Welborn from Human Resources.

“Chuck is a very productive officer and specializes in traffic enforcement and accident investigations.  He has handled several serious major accidents during the past year that required a methodical, detailed investigation.  Also, Chuck was the project manager for the mobile video project which was replacing the old VHS format video equipment in the patrol cars to digital format equipment with wireless download into a storage server.  This was a very big project for an officer to handle but Chuck did all the research, handled vendor bidding, the contract award, and the complete installation and implementation of the new system, which works wonderfully!”

“Chuck’s cheerful demeanor and commitment to public safety is always a plus.  Chuck’s really done a great job this past year.”

Officer Tinsman began his career in 1995 with the Colleyville Police Department in the small cinderblock building next to City Park, with alternating duties both in the Records Department and Dispatch.  At thattime, the small facility housed not only the Police Station, but also the City Jail and Fire Department.

By 1996, Officer Tinsman commenced duty with the Patrol Division, and was a natural for Traffic Officer in June of 1997.  He became a certified and licensed Child Safety Seat Inspector, and has worked tirelessly to ensure parents secure children in approved carriers and are fastened in their vehicles correctly.  In 1998, he was named Colleyville’s Employee of the Year.

     The new digital Mobile-Vision L3 computers Chief Ingram mentioned have been online for about 5 months in the eleven patrol cars, and have had no performance issues at all.  Officer Tinsman said that along with reliability, speed, quality visual and audio features, the Chief had asked him to get a system that lasts and is capable of growth within the Department.  The DVD records digitally and comes into the Justice Center wirelessly on a secure network. dedicated to the server, eliminating the logbook of police cars.

     Each officer is assigned his own compact flash memory, and once on the server other Police personnel can access the digital record of arrests and traffic stops.  There is a breathtaking 2100 hours of video capacity, and in 145 days on line, with 5200 videos stored, not even half the capacity has been used.  Only 90 days are mandated for keeping these kinds of records, but Officer Tinsman said six months would easily be the normal period.  Felony DWIs are already tagged to save much longer, and anything “too old” automatically are saved on DVD.  There is additionally a digital recorder in the Intoxilizor Room to “marry up” with the traffic stop data record.

     Any of the DVDs can be immediately merged to any cases filed with the District Attorney’s Office and include narrative plus the Supervisor’s comments.

     In contested Municipal Court trials, where formerly a VHS tape had to be located out of a multitude in the Records library, previewed by the police officer to find the section of the tape where the citation was issued, and perhaps exhibit a grainy or inconclusive outcome, by comparison, the Mobile-System digital system is spectacular.

     Officer Tinsman explained, “When you would see a visual violation, such as someone running a stop sign, with our old VCR units, you pressed ‘record’ and there was a 2-3 second delay and sometimes did not capture the actual event.  With the new Digital L3 units, you can actually capture and ‘pre-record’ the 20 seconds of what just happened.”

     Not only that but among many features, the system integrates radar speed, has Google street and aerial GPS data, and can save and print license plate images.  It tracks whether the siren and/or light on the patrol unit were used.  There is even a crash sensor not tied to the airbags, as to when a crash may have occurred, and tracks whether the brakes were used. The patrol car units also consume 80% less power.

     The Colleyville City Council had approved the $100,000 purchase price about six months ago for the Mobile-Vision computer system after Chuck Tinsman earned the enthusiastic endorsement from Chief Ingram.  Officer Tinsman told Local News Only, “In my opinion, these digital units will pay for themselves”.

     They also appear to be a slam dunk, tour-de-force for law enforcement in Colleyville.  We heartily join Chief Ingram in saying, “Congratulations Chuck!”