Policing a big event? There’s a Mac for that...

Danish police have turned to Macs for use in managing this week’s Environmental Conference in Copenhagen.

This UN-backed event will see the world’s biggest political and business leaders and protestors from across the gamut of groups involved in the climate change debate descend on Copenhagen.

With so much action, no great surprise local police have put together a central command infrastructure that’s run entirely by Mac Pros and Mac Minis - there’s not a Windows box in sight.

That police prefer Macs isn’t new, at least, not locally. Danish cops have been using Macs since 1996 - well - not Macs precisely, they ran Steve Job’s NextStep OS. The decision to move to Mac followed extensive research into what other systems were available. It didn’t like what it found...

“We were looking at the leading [systems] on the European Market to see what they were able to do for us… we didn't like it and went back empty handed,” explained the Police Inspector who made the Mac decision in a chat with IT Pro.

So they created a system based on 25 Mac Pros and 73 Mac minis. And the system is more efficient than those used by other European police forces.

“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,” the report explains.

Police forces in the UK typically field up to 50 people to manage central command for similar sized populations. And they use (erm) Windows systems, if the report is correct, which are slow to process data and require operators keep a paper and pen by their PC (so they can jot down notes while the computer shudders into action.).

More here.