Since 9-11, law enforcement agencies nationwide have been trying to find better ways to protect our nation and prevent crime

On Wednesday, law enforcement officers in La Crosse added a new crime fighting and terrorism prevention weapon to their arsenal.

The new weapon isn't a gun, a tank or even a machine for that matter. It's a computer program.

"To me it's one of the most monumental things to happen in law enforcement in perhaps the last decade," says La Crosse Police Chief Ed Kondracki.

The new program, called the Wisconsin Justice Information Sharing Gateway or WIJIS, puts information about criminals from across the state in the hands of all officers.

"Law enforcement has a long tradition of collecting information,” says David Steingraber, Executive Director for the Office of Justice Assistance. “We do that well, but we've stored it historically in silos. And it's been very difficult for that info to be shared on a regular and widespread basis."

Steingraber says criminals are more mobile than ever. Now, this program will help eliminate city and some day, state boundaries.

"The Justice Gateway System is being used by about 1,000 law enforcement officers and those officers have access to 1.5 million records," says Steingraber.

Each officer gets a user name and password that lets them get info about any criminal in the state data base… Helping the good guys track down the criminals.

"What public law enforcement authorities have is a tremendous advantage over those who would break our laws and terrorize us… is we can collect and systematically use information and it's important that we be able to share that info."

Chief Kondracki says the new high-tech system is as good as a fingerprint... At their fingertips.

"This program will now make millions of bits of information on suspects available to law enforcement."

Right now, 4 counties are connected to the system with many others in progress. Counties that can’t afford to add the system can still get an authorized username to access other departments’ information. Next year they hope for 5,000 users and 3 million records to be available.