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ALBANY, GA -- It seems like such a little thing. A laptop. But it's helping the police department in a big way.

“It will allow officers to complete paperwork, traffic accidents, incident reports that immediately go into a data system. If you have a prior incident where someone is a suspect in anything, you'll have that information to you,” says Chief John Proctor.

A time saver in more ways than one. It gets information from the officer to you, and decreases the number of calls officers have to make to dispatch.

“To run a name check, to run a tag check, to run a person check, we will be able to do it from the car,” says Chief Proctor.

Getting the bad guys behind bars sooner.

The Albany Police Department is expecting to get 30 more of these laptops. And Ward II commissioner Dorothy Hubbard is really excited about this because folks in her area say that deterring crime is their number one concern.

“I am for anything that will allow us to decrease crime and decrease the perception of crime,” says Hubbard.

She says her constituents see more burglaries and car break-ins than anything else.

“We are hearing that police presence is an important issue,” says Hubbard.

To help with that, another weapon in the department's arsenal is the mobile command center.

“It's truly and totally outfitted to serve as a temporary dispatch center in case the 911 center goes down,” says Proctor.

The department also uses it out in the city during road checks or big events. That plus the new laptops are helping police take an even bigger bite out of crime.

“We think it is beneficial to this community, it will help the officers do their jobs better,” says Proctor.

The laptops will cost a little over $163,000. 85 of those laptops are in place now. The extra 30 will nearly fill their need to have one in each field unit and Chief proctor says that should take about two months.