Case Study: Secretaria de Segurança Pública do Estado da Bahia (SSP-BA) achieves faster response and secure mobile access to police databases with BlackBerry

BlackBerry Smartphones Report for Duty to Help Brazilian Police Force Protect its Community

Secretaria de Segurança Pública do Estado da Bahia (SSP-BA), the public safety department for Bahia, Brazil, faced slow, error-prone field operations because officers on patrol lacked remote access to five critical databases. Investigators relied on pen-and-paper notes or two-way radios and had to return to stations to verify suspects, vehicles and records, while also needing secure, fast ways to find addresses and coordinate responses.

To address this, SSP-BA deployed about 600 BlackBerry smartphones running Tecnew Informática’s Police Mobility in Operations app, integrated with internal security and augmented by BBM, SMS and GPS mapping. The phones put database lookups, real-time updates and secure logins in officers’ hands, eliminated handwritten errors, sped responses and improved collaboration—enabling more than 53,000 background checks, verification of over 98,000 vehicles, recovery of stolen cars and the apprehension of 21 wanted criminals—and prompting plans to double devices and add crime-mapping features.

Secretaria da Segurança Pública

Alan Evangelista

Civil Police Investigator and Technology Coordinator