By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

The Scientific Research Corp. has given the bad guys one more reason to believe crime doesn’t pay—technology that will ensure records of earlier misdeeds will follow them wherever they go in the Lowcountry.

Thanks in part to a philosophy born of its longtime relationship with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in North Charleston, the SRC developed the tri-county open-source communication system that allows local law enforcement agencies to communicate critical information to each other about apprehended suspects and alleged criminals on the loose, despite differences in how information is collected and stored in each jurisdiction.

“We’ve been working with SPAWAR since 1990, and this project kind of grew out of that,” said Tim Washington, an SRC vice president and head of its North Charleston office. “By utilizing SPAWAR’s philosophy of finding an existing commercial product and revamping it for another use, we’ve not only enabled law local law enforcement agencies to transfer criminal records in real time, we’ve been able to do it at a significant cost-savings for these agencies.”

Responding to a longstanding need, Washington said SRC began working on the project four years ago in collaboration with the South Carolina Research Authority.

“One of the longstanding challenges in local law enforcement was that different jurisdictions have different ways of managing their own information, warrants, criminal records and the like,” he explained.

“In the past, when a criminal committed a crime in Charleston County and then another in Dorchester County, the information that they were wanted in Charleston might not have followed them. There wasn’t a communications network to tie those jurisdictional systems together.

“Finally, we came up with a nonproprietary software package that resides at each agency and allows records to be shared more effectively at a very low cost,” Washington said. “In fact, it’s proved so successful that we’re currently in the process of rolling it out across the state.”

SRC, which is headquartered in Atlanta, opened its North Charleston facility in 1991 specifically to work with SPAWAR on integrated systems and communications solutions projects for the U.S. military.

The company, which now does about 80% of its business with SPAWAR and its clients, currently employs 500 in three buildings on the Peppermill Parkway. Washington said SRC is now considering whether to expand into a fourth building or to move the entire operation into a 100,000-square-foot building nearby.

One of the best things about working with SPAWAR, Washington said, is being able to witness how good the agency is at teaming with partners in private industry.

“That’s really what inspired us to branch out,” he said.

As a result, a project that started out networking six local agencies has now spread to 16 jurisdictions throughout the Lowcountry. SRC is now working with the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center to expand the network to all of South Carolina.

“While it’s always satisfying to come up with the solution to a problem a client is having, to me, the thing that’s great about this is we’re using know-how developed to protect our soldiers overseas and applying it to better protect families here at home,” Washington said. “It’s great to leverage military contracting experience for the common good.”

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.

SUBSCRIBE | REPRINTS | CONTACT US

Phone: 843-849-3100    Fax: 843-849-3122