Pratt ? Police officers in this south-central Kansas town plan to use a wireless remote camera system to monitor potential trouble spots from headquarters and patrol cars.

The miniature portable cameras, linked to a wireless broadband system, will be placed in multiple locations, ranging from banks to parks to alleys, said Pratt Police Chief Lonnie McCollum.

The system will allow patrol officers to see inside a bank if they receive an alarm and to access the views from cameras already in place in some stores, McCollum said.

“We’re not limited to anything — anywhere we want to put a camera,” said Capt. Steve Holmes, who has directed the four-year federal matching grant project, now in its third year. The total cost of the system is expected to reach $225,000.

The cameras will free up officers who had been involved in staking out suspected narcotics locations and reviewing the tapes from those stakeouts, Holmes said.

“Officers will be able to watch while they are in patrol cars,” he said.

The Pratt Police Department is one of the first in Kansas to install the system, which functions through a 2.4-gigabyte wireless network that covers approximately 10 square miles using a series of six towers, Holmes said. The system also provides high-speed Internet access in patrol cars.