The Lawrence, Massachusetts, Police Department (PD) requested assistance to streamline the collection, collation, analysis, and dissemination of data products. BJA NTTAC referred the requestor to Christopher Bruce, who provided assistance directly to Lawrence PD without BJA NTTAC support.
Inefficient collection and collation of call, incident, arrest, and other police-related crime data, and less than optimal creation of spatial data (maps).The specific technical need Lawrence seeks to address is streamlining the collection, collation, analysis, and dissemination of relevant data for all of the purposes above. Towards that end, Lawrence implemented a new RMS in May 2016, but the RMS does not meet all of the data analysis needs of the department. To meet these ends we wish to create a relational Microsoft Access database that houses the fields relevant to all the purposes above and that is connected to our RMS through an ODBC connection. This requires advance knowledge of relational databases, ODBC connections, crime analysis, and (preferably) our RMS system (known as QED).We also wish to automate some of our mapping functions via model building in ArcGIS, and to create ad hoc maps in a more efficient manner by pulling prepared incident and/or call data directly from the Access database into ArcGIS. The above improvements should: reduce the amount of data entry currently required to analyze and report crime data; reduce collection error; increase the ability of the department to conduct real-time analysis for both administrative and operational ends; reduce training requirements for incoming analysts; allow more ad hoc reporting directly from a database where most of the data have already been collected and collated, and are ready to be analyzed.
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We are respectfully requesting assistance ASAP to better manage our crime data in a busy and relatively understaffed department.