Fire marshal’s office joins national tracking system

AUGUSTA – Until now, the State Fire Marshal’s Office never had a system in place in which investigators working on arson cases at opposite ends of the state could examine one another’s reports.

Now, thanks to the office’s cooperation with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Maine has become the first state in the nation to sign on to the ATF’s Bomb and Arson Tracking System.

This new system, which is free, allows state, local and other federal law enforcement agencies to share information about bomb and arson cases and related incidents, according to John C. Dean, state fire marshal.

State investigators can now search for similarities in cases elsewhere in the state and country using computers and keyboards in their offices or laptops in their vehicles.

“I’m very excited about it; it’s nice to have a system designed specifically for the kind of work we do,” Dean said Friday.

Already up and running, the system is being used not only by the State Fire Marshal’s Office in Maine, but also by some local fire and police departments around the country.

The state agency’s involvement in the Internet program, which is limited to law enforcement agencies, actually began during the program’s initial stages, according to Dean.

Maine was one of six pilot sites for the program, thanks to the good relationships that Sgt. Stewart Jacobs of Dean’s office established over the years with ATF while attending classes offered by the bureau and through his teachings at the National Fire Academy.

Other pilot sites were the Glendale, Ariz., police and fire departments; the Winchester, Va., police department; the Tulsa, Okla., fire department; and the public safety department in Southlake, Texas.

Dean said Maine’s fire marshals actively participated in development of the system and his office had “great input” in the final product. The end result is a record-management system developed by people who have expertise in fires and bombs, he said.

“For us, it’s a low-cost way to manage our data,” he said.

Although ATF serves as the custodian for BATS, each participating agency will manage and control its own information and decide how and with whom to share the classified information.

The system allows fire marshals to capture details of their investigations, including the origin, the type of device used, suspects, losses, geographic location and other related information, and to share this with other law enforcement agencies.

For example, investigators can watch or search for similarities or patterns in arsons, and they can create maps to electronically pinpoint specific arsons that may be connected, Dean said.

Investigations involve a lot of searches that often lead to dead ends, and when dead ends are reached, the investigator has to take a different approach to find a suspect.

“It takes a long time to move a case forward,” the state fire marshal said. It is not unusual to have at least 75 interviews for each case.

The fact that all the investigators in his office have laptops in their vehicles to readily include and access information from the system should help even further, according to Dean.

A federal grant was obtained for the purchase of the laptops, which help link the 10 investigators and two supervisors in the field.

Having the BATS system at their fingertips should help reduce the amount of time spent on investigations. “I believe it’s going to pay big dividends,” Dean said.