See this gorgeous Web site? It is owned and operated by the good people of the City of Reno, Nevada. Lately they have been very busy not only making the site's presentation look great, but finding new ways to actually use it to connect and better serve citizens. One of the department's latest moves is to install an online crime reporting system. Last month the city upgraded the system to allow for direct online reporting of information about suspects, when previously citizens had to speak to an officer. The value here is that this frees the cops to tend to the serious stuff. And Reno's system will even accept online reports in Spanish and French, says Reno PD's Lori Heidenreich.
Here is a City of Reno news release. [Also making the move this year to online crime reporting: Riverside, California.]
Heidenreich answered our questions:
History: The Reno Police Department's online crime reporting system came into being as a response to the need for alternative ways for residents to report non-emergency issues. The Reno Police Department was already taking desk reports and telephonic reports for these issues, but wanted to expand the alternatives so that citizens could file their reports without having to come into the station. It also gave the citizen the ability to file the report after office hours.
As it stated in the press release, the online reporting system is designed for situations in which there is little or no evidence, such as burglary, destruction of property, disturbing the peace, graffiti, harassment, identity theft, lost property, suspicious circumstances, etc.
Many times the citizens need to file a report for insurance purposes only. Each report that comes in via the online system is reviewed by a Community Services Officer. If we have additional questions we call the citizen back for clarification. Once the report is approved by the CSO, it is forwarded to the Detectives division, just like every report whether received in person or over the phone. By taking these reports online or at the desk, this allows the officers on patrol to be available to respond to crimes in progress and life safety calls.
In approximately 2005 or 2006, the Reno Police Department started accepting online crime reports through our Web page. This was a beginning, but was not very user friendly as the information had to be manually input to our crime reporting system and most times did not include all the necessary information for the report.
In December 2007, the Reno Police Department put in place a new online crime reporting system called Cop-Logic. This system is very user friendly and has been received very positively by our citizens.
Public response: The initial response was a little slow, but we are now receiving approximately 200 to 300 reports a month through the online system. The response from the public has been very positive. The only negative responses we received were regarding us not accepting reports that contained suspect information. This generated less than five responses in the 10 months we have had the system in place. We discovered that we were rejecting approximately 50 to 75 reports a month for this reason, so last month we expanded the system to accept reports with suspect information.
Biggest benefit: The biggest benefit for the citizens is that officers are not tied up handling non-emergency issues and are available to respond to life safety calls for service and crimes in progress. This also allows the officer to be more proactive in his/her beat, therefore possibly stopping some crime before it even happens.
Another benefit is a cost savings to the citizens. A study was completed that estimated the average cost for an officer to respond to a call is $45.00. By taking 200 to 300 online reports a month, the city is saving approximately $9,000 to $13,500 a month. The initial cost of the program was $23,000, so in just a few months the cost of the program was recovered.
A third benefit of the system is that the citizens are given another alternative way to make their report and it can be done at whatever time is convenient for them. The online system also sends them an e-mail response containing their case number and a PDF copy of the report in case they need to print it for their records. This saves the citizen from having to go to the Records Department to receive a copy of their report.
One of the biggest benefits for the Police Department, beside the cost savings, was that the Coplogic System "talks" with our Police Reporting System (Tiburon) and the information is downloaded daily into our system. This saves the Community Services Officer the time of having to manually input the information into our system.
Other cities that have online crime reporting: There are agencies across the country that have been implementing an online crime reporting systems. If you go to the Coplogic website, it will give you a list of the agencies that are using their system. [More info on Coplogic users here.] The list includes all size communities, ranging from 1,000 to 1,019,000 in population.
Etc.: One exciting thing about Coplogic, is that it will accept reports in other languages, such as Spanish or French, and translate it into English. We are currently working on making a Spanish link on our Web site, so that we can utilize this function in the future.
