Advantages of Using Online Crime Reporting Software at Your Agency

Time Savings:

Consider how much time is spent on minor reports by your agency. Operators take the call (2 minutes). Officer is dispatched and drives to the reporting party’s location (12 minutes). Officer explains process and collects information from the reporting party before answering their questions (15-45 minutes). Officer manually enters report in the records management system (10 minutes). That is 39-54 minutes per call that your agency is spending! When you deploy an online crime reporting software solution, this is reduced to almost nothing.

Social Distancing:

No face to face contact with the public. Keep your officers safe by reducing their exposure to potential virus carriers. Viruses do not spread when submitted through an online crime reporting system in cyberspace.

Response Time:

When officers do not have to gather the initial information from minor reports, they are available to take more serious calls and your agency’s overall response time will improve.

Accuracy

Even the most articulate officers can misinterpret statements made by reporting parties. Hard to read hand-written statements can lead to errors. Misspelled names and other information can become a real problem. Online crime reporting resolves this by taking this information directly from the reporting party in a digital format.

Continue to Provide Personal Contact

Whether your online records management system calls for it or not, officers should always follow up with a phone call to the reporting party. This allows them to fill in the holes created by any missing information. It also gives the reporting party the sense that their concerns are being addressed, getting the attention they deserve.

Security

Many police departments have considered setting a form on their department website. While this sounds like a quick and easy solution, these forms often just send unencrypted emails to a recipient at the agency.

Reporting Party Time Savings

No need to drive to the police department to complete a crime report. Some members of the public are intimidated by police and may benefit from being allowed to complete their statement on “their time”. Others may feel like they are wasting officer’s time with minor reports. Online crime reporting resolves this as well. By being allowed to complete their report anytime and anywhere, citizens complete their report when they are ready.