Mesa County commissioners just green-lit a massive $764,134 contract to replace every aging field tablet used by sheriff’s deputies, road crews, and building inspectors, ending years of sluggish devices that crawl when deputies try to pull body-cam footage or run plates in remote canyons.
The upgrade is the biggest single tech investment for field operations in county history and will put brand-new Panasonic Toughbook 55 rugged laptops with detachable keyboards and true 5G modems into 120 county vehicles starting early 2025.
Why the Old Tablets Were Holding Deputies Back
Five-year-old Microsoft Surface tablets currently bolted into patrol units are choking under the weight of modern policing.
“These things freeze when you’re trying to watch body-worn camera video in the field,” Operations Patrol Captain Eric Sperber told commissioners Monday. “We’re out in the middle of Glade Park or Gateway with one bar of LTE and the tablet just spins.”
Deputies often have to drive miles to find signal just to upload reports or view drone footage from structure fires and search-and-rescue missions. Road and Bridge crews face the same nightmare when trying to pull up engineering plans on active job sites.
The performance gap became impossible to ignore in 2023 when the sheriff’s office rolled out 120 new body cameras and in-car video systems that generate gigabytes of data every shift.
What the New Gear Can Actually Do
The contract with CDW Government, approved unanimously Monday, delivers Panasonic TOUGHBOOK 55 Mk2 semi-rugged devices that are built like tanks and run circles around consumer tablets.
Key upgrades that made deputies’ eyes light up during testing:
- Verizon 5G modems with external antennas for signal even in the Book Cliffs
- Intel 12th-gen processors that won’t choke on 4K body-cam footage
- Detachable keyboards so deputies can type full reports from the driver’s seat
- Hot-swappable batteries for 24-hour shifts without plugging in
- Sunlight-readable 1000-nit screens visible in the high-desert glare
“This isn’t just faster internet, this is the difference between solving a crime in 20 minutes or two days,” Sperber said after the vote.
Not Just Sheriff’s Office: Every Field Worker Wins
While the sheriff’s office is getting the lion’s share (78 units), the deal also outfits:
- Road and Bridge crews (22 units) who need real-time access to GIS maps and snow-plow routing
- Building Safety inspectors (11 units) pulling up plans and issuing permits on-site
- Engineering and survey teams (9 units) running AutoCAD in the field
County IT director Shea Suski told commissioners the lease structure actually saves money over buying outright and includes four years of warranty plus next-business-day replacement if a unit gets run over by a grader (which has happened twice).
Timeline: New Tablets Hit the Streets by St. Patrick’s Day
Panasonic needs eight weeks to build and image the custom configuration. Installation begins in February at the county fleet garage on 25 Road.
First units go to patrol deputies working graveyard shift because they operate in the darkest, most remote corners of the 3,341-square-mile county where connectivity matters most.
Full fleet rollout finishes by March 17, 2025, meaning every deputy responding to your call next spring will have faster internet than most people have at home.
Mesa County is now one of the first rural agencies in Colorado leaping straight from 4G to integrated 5G field computing, a move that’s already drawing questions from neighboring Garfield and Montrose counties about how they pulled it off.
When the final tablet is bolted into place next year, deputies will no longer have to tell victims “I’ll run this when I get back to town.”
For the first time in years, they’ll have more bandwidth in the desert than most of us do on our couches.
What do you think, is $764K worth it to give deputies real-time tools in the field, or should the money have gone elsewhere? Drop your take in the comments and tag #MesaCounty5G if you’re talking about it on X tonight.
