College Says ‘So Long’ to Paper-Based Records Management

E-mail Encourages Department Policy Compliance
Communication among Alamo Colleges’ police officers is strengthened with the records management system’s internal E-mail system. This feature passes information, instructions and correspondence between users.

However, Adams cites an even more compelling reason why this capability is a key to his department’s effectiveness. “A lot of our officers won’t check their district E-mail accounts every day. But with Crimestar they’re forced to check the software’s internal E-mail because this is their means of reporting incidents they were involved in.”

The records management system also addresses a wide selection of records categories, yet allows the department to track any record in a category ­immediately.

For example, in one case, a building had experienced an unauthorized intrusion. “We were able to develop a suspect because he was already in Crimestar,” Adams explains. “[The suspect] got into the system on another case, so the investigator did some checking regarding descriptive information on a person who had broken into the building. We got the guy on videotape.”

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After entering some information on the suspect into the system, other suspects were displayed. “We eliminated everyone except this one guy based just on physical appearance,” Adams says. “In the past, with our paper-based system, we would never have been able to do this.”

Adams notes another advantage to quick information retrieval: “The officers have the information they need in terms of suspicious persons, events and crime activity. They’re able to see patterns and to act quickly.”

The system can also give percentages of criminal activity at each campus. Armed with such data, Adams can use it to determine the allocation of manpower.

Sgt. Ben Pena, who manages police personnel for Alamo Colleges, says tracking criminal activity trends has been effective. “We’ve discovered that suspects move from one campus to another,” he says.

System Improves Clery, Uniform Crime Reporting
A big challenge for the school’s police department has been compliance with federally mandated crime reporting procedures, particularly the Clery Act. Crimestar RMS contains a “Report Creator” component within its “Reports” module, which allows the police department to create a Clery report. “When we deal with this part of Crimestar,” Pena says, “we just need to complete this form and post it on our Web page.”

A Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) capability also is embedded in the software. The user simply clicks on the UCR form and can fill out Parts I and II, then E-mail the completed form to the local or state filing authority, or to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The police department’s records management upgrades should come in handy, especially since school officials expect its student population to grow in the next several years. According to Adams, “Each officer can retrieve the information he or she needs instantly, share it with other officers at our various campus sites, and is now better able to direct his or her efforts toward making our campuses safe. We’re not relying on word of mouth.”

Robert Galvin is a Portland,Oregon-based freelance writer who writes about
law enforcement technology, including records management software. He has written articles on technology for this field during the past eight years.