NATCHEZ — Natchez police officers soon should be able to take the office with them on patrol.

The city’s information technology department is currently testing recently installed laptop computers in a couple of patrol cars.

The laptops, Capt. Scott Frye said, will allow officers to fill out reports, look up warrants and calls for service, communicate with other officers via messaging software, check court files and other information.

Frye said being able to fill out reports and save them in the system from a patrol car will be a great benefit to the officers.

“Right now, they have to do their reports at the station,” he said. “This way they can do them from their cars, and they can maintain a police presence on the streets.”

The laptops will also let officers look up mugshots on file at the police station, which Frye said will help prevent people who have been arrested before from giving officers false information.

“The officers will be able to look at the photo and confirm that is the person,” Frye said. “That’s going to be a big help.”

At some point, the department would also like to have GPS software that would track the officers while they are on patrol, Frye said.

Natchez IT Director Ed Bowser said all 18 laptops should be installed in police cars by the end of the year, a year after the laptops were purchased.

Magnolia Bluffs Casino presented a check to purchase the laptops in December for approximately $17,000; they arrived in early February.

A long delay in getting the laptops installed was one factor that led to the termination of the city’s former IT director and Bowser’s hiring.

Bowser said once all the parts to outfit the cars for the laptops arrive, it takes about half a day to install and set them up.

The police department, Frye said, is hoping to get software in the next fiscal year that will allow them to look up a person’s information by their driver’s license or license plate.

The city previously had laptops in patrol cars in the 1990s and the capability to look up information by licenses and plates, Frye said. The department eliminated the laptops because they were not compatible with the system.

The company the city uses for the police laptops’ software also makes software for driver’s license and license plate information research, so there would be no compatibility issues, Frye said. The software could cost approximately $20,000, but Frye said Bowser is looking at ways to make it cheaper.