Hammacher Homepage 300x250“As the world descends on Copenhagen this week for the United Nations Climate Change conference, the city’s police must manage protests, secure world leaders, and handle all the other issues that come with a major global event,” Nicole Kobie reports for IT PRO. “Perhaps surprisingly, the force is doing it with Macs.”

MacDailyNews Take: What’s perhaps surprising about it? The Danes probably want their computers to work instead of wasting all of their time working on their computers.

Kobie reports, “The Danish Police Department isn’t using Apple computers on the go, or keeping in touch with iPhones. No, the entire central command is now run by Mac Pros and Mac Minis [sic], with not a single PC to be seen.”

MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, they just want their stuff to work. No biggie, unless you’re a magazine dedicated to those who value job security over doing a quality job for their companies. BTW, nice all-caps. Typical.

Kobie reports, “The Danish police force has been using Macs since 1996, running NeXTStep. But five years ago, the force needed to upgrade, as spare parts were becoming scarce… Running since mid-July, the new bespoke Mac-based system uses 25 Mac Pros and 73 Minis.”

“Because the system lets operators be more efficient, the Danish department uses a third fewer call takers than other forces in Europe. Shifts of six to eight people using 14 workstations are all the city of 1.2 million needs to take 800 to 1,200 emergency policing calls,” Kobie reports. “‘It takes a lot of human resources to… produce the same amount of call cards. We use eight people. In Kent and Surrey and Glasgow, they use 30, 40, 50,’ said Karsten Højgaard, Police Inspector. The force’s Windows-based systems didn’t allow for multiple calls to be open at the same time, and was slow to process data, so operators had to keep paper and pen at their desks ‘because the system can’t cope.’”

“‘We do not have paper and pens… that’s one of the major advances for Macs, they can handle a lot of calls at the same time,’ Højgaard said, noting over 40 can be open at once on the current systems,” Kobie reports. “‘We haven’t seen any other system that can do that,’ he said.”

“Aside from the daily operations setup, there are three other floors in the centre. One is a local datacentre, running Mac Xserve machines in a RAID 5 setup,” Kobie reports. “Another floor is for major policing operations, such as this week’s summit. It features more Apple [Mac] computers, hooked up to a series of massive displays, with 32 screens as large as 55in, so managers can keep an eye on what’s going on using maps, photos, and GPS to send resources to the right places. Data requests can be brought up, and video links patched in from anywhere.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on ClimateGate:

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Islandgirl45" for the heads up.]