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CAMBRIDGE — The employees of the Henry County Sheriff’s division discovered the laborious means how necessary the pc of their workplace was.
Known as the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC, the pc managed quite a few capabilities within the jail, the sheriff’s workplace and the courthouse.
It managed the system the place a dispatcher may push a button from their workplace and open the door of any cell within the jail.
It managed the numeric keypads the division’s investigators used to get into their places of work.
It managed all of the closed-circuit TV cameras across the jail and the courthouse.
It managed the intercoms within the jail and on the courthouse doorways.
It even managed the plumbing.
And in the future, the PLC — which had been put in when the jail complicated was transformed in 1998 — stopped working. All of the capabilities it managed additionally stopped.
The one strategy to open a cell door was for a staffer to take a key to the cell and open it by hand.
There have been no safety digicam pictures, no keypads working at workplace doorways, no intercoms.
Inmates couldn’t even flush the bogs of their cells.
Thankfully, sheriff’s division officers situated a county in Iowa that had the identical system and fortuitously, that county had not too long ago upgraded the central pc and was keen to half with the previous one.
That pc nonetheless labored, and the Henry County division acquired it and put in it instead of the failed pc.
All of the computer-controlled methods are working once more, however Sheriff Kerry Loncka mentioned it’s solely a matter of time earlier than the second-hand pc fails.
So the sheriff’s division is saving cash from the general public security tax to purchase a brand new pc.
That may require a giant funding. Loncka estimated that the brand new tools will value $600,000 to $800,000.
Earlier than the general public security tax was carried out, it could have been very tough for the county authorities to provide you with that sort of cash.
However now, the brand new tax can pay for a brand new pc — and for some peace of thoughts for the folks within the sheriff’s division.
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