MADERA COUNTY, Calif. ' The Board of Supervisors on Aug. 5 approved a countywide cooperative to adopt Peregrine Software Technologies, a commercial product intended to connect disparate record systems across law enforcement and partner agencies.

County staff said the project is funded from locally allocated funds through the California Community Corrections Partnership (CCP) board and will be made available to local law enforcement, probation, behavioral health and prosecutors to reduce information silos during investigations. Sheriff's office representatives described the tool as providing a fast, centralized search across participating agencies' databases ("name- or person-based search"), which they said helps investigators quickly assemble contacts, custody history, visitation records and other operational details.

Supervisors and staff noted integration is technically complex because agencies use several report-writing and records-management systems. The county said it negotiated a cooperative arrangement so smaller agencies could share the platform without carrying the full development cost. Implementation planning will include countywide meetings to determine which systems to integrate; staff said some larger agencies with more funding already use comparable tools and praised Peregrine's regional performance.

Board members asked whether fire departments or other non-law enforcement agencies could have direct user access. Staff said the initial configuration did not include direct fire access but that the platform allows information sharing through authorized investigators and that expansion to additional departments could be explored during implementation.

Supervisors asked for periodic updates on integration progress and how the tool affects investigations on the ground. County staff said the contract allows the county to terminate if the product does not meet expectations; they also said vendor references reported integrations being live within weeks in other jurisdictions.

Why it matters: Cross-agency data sharing aims to speed investigations and improve public-safety outcomes, but it raises questions about user access controls, privacy, and the complexity of linking many different software systems.

What's next: County and participating agencies will convene to identify priority systems for integration and create user agreements; staff will report implementation milestones to the board.