The timing could have been better for Denver police.

On the same Wednesday it was learned that some officers were occasionally altering suspect descriptions to match the person later caught for a crime, an officer fired for lying was welcomed back to the force by the police union.

These events are not related, yet in the minds of a skeptical public, they may as well be handcuffed together.

And Denver police officials know it.

“We do,” said Lt. Matt Murray. “And I think you start with Chief (Robert) White and Safety Manager (Alex) Martinez, who are working every day to correct that perception.”

The first controversy revolves around how some officers are using the department’s “VersaDex” report-management system.

In the old days, say, way back in 1999, officers would respond to a call and fill out a report. It would include the witness descriptions of any suspects, some basic information about when and where, and a narrative of the case. If additional information was received later, or an arrest was made, a supplemental report was filled out and it would be filed along with the original.

The reports would travel together forever and be provided to the lawyers for any defendant arrested in the case, so they could know what police knew.

It was a good system. But all that paper was pretty cumbersome to keep around.

See the full article here.

The FBI Tuesday reaffirmed its rule that all cloud products sold to to U.S. law enforcement agencies must comply with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) security requirements.

While the nation’s top law enforcement agency concedes that some vendors may have a tough time meeting those requirements, it insisted that there would be no compromising on security.

“The FBI remains committed to using technology in its information-sharing processes, but not at the sacrifice of the security of the information with which it has been entrusted,” Stephen Fischer Jr., a spokesman for the FBI’s CJIS division said today in an email to Computerworld.

Fischer’s comments come less than two months after the Los Angeles Police Department canceled a planned migration to Google Apps because it said the cloud service was not compliant with CJIS security requirements.

At the time, two city officials noted that U.S. Department of Justice requirements for the CJIS are not currently compatible with cloud computing.

Google has also maintained that CJIS requirements are incompatible with cloud computing and therefore present a unique challenge to any cloud vendor.

The CJIS database, maintained by the FBI, is one of the world’s largest repositories of criminal history records and fingerprints.

The records are available to law enforcement agencies and contractors around the country that comply with the security rules, which include requirements that all data, both in transit and at rest, be encrypted and that anyone who accesses the database pass FBI background checks.

Fischer today maintained that the CJIS security requirements are compatible with cloud computing.

“The CJIS Security Policy is a cloud-compatible policy,” that was fully vetted and approved by local, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Canada, he said, while acknowledging that “the requirements may be tough for some vendors to meet.”

One of the more challenging requirements requires cloud service providers to identify all system, database, security and network administrators who have access to criminal justice information, he said.

Similarly, cloud vendors will likely find it difficult to require fingerprint criminal background checks on all administrators with access to the criminal justice information. Fischer said.

Analysts have previously noted such rules would be particularly difficult for cloud vendors like Google that maintain staffed data centers outside the U.S.

Fischer noted as much today. “Admittedly, these requirements may be difficult for some cloud-computing vendors due to the sheer numbers and the geographic disbursement of their personnel,” he said.

“However,” he added, “these requirements aren’t new to vendors serving the criminal justice community and many vendors have successfully met these requirements for years.”

Jeff Gould, CEO of IT consulting firm Peerstone Research, said that the requirements are likely most challenging to large cloud providers with roots in the business of providing hosted services to consumers.

Several small, specialty providers, today offer cloud services that are compliant with CJIS requirements, said Gould, a co-founder of Safegov.org, which promotes best practices for deploying cloud-based systems in government entities.

Gould cited InterAct Public Safety, Datamaxx, and Vertical Computer Services as cloud companies that use secure data centers staffed by people who have undergone the requisite FBI background checks.

Services from such firms may be more expensive than the offerings from large vendors like Google, but these firms have invested the needed funds to meet the FBI’s security requirements, he said.

He added that the FBI has tweaked CJIS requirements to make it easier for cloud vendors to comply.

“The old requirements were written before cloud computing took off,” Gould said. “CJIS 5.0 goes out of its way to make room for cloud vendors.”

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan, or subscribe to Jaikumar’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.

Original article

Police introduced a new crime map website for locals to use.  They hope the program will help keep residents safe, and continue the diminishing trend of crime in the area.  And because it’s free, officials hope citizens will be encouraged to use the website.

Anne Arundel County will not turn its new computer-aided dispatch system back on until at least mid-March, according to county’s director of information technology.

The computer program was switched on Dec. 6 only to be turned off 21 days later amid complaints from public safety employees who said it was causing safety problems. The system was originally scheduled to be plugged back in Thursday.

County officials estimated last month it would take 30 days to resolve the employees’ issues with the system. The county decided to take an extra month or two and make some additional “functional enhancements” to the system.

“We figured while it is down, let’s go a step beyond,” said Bill Ryan, the head of the county’s Office of Information Technology. “We are trying to make it even easier to use than it was intended.”

With the extra time, the county also will offer additional training to dispatchers and other public safety workers to make sure they understand how to use the Tiburon E-911 Computer-Aided Dis-patch system.

Union officials – who asked County Executive John R. Leopold last month to take the system down until their concerns could be addressed – praised the county yesterday for reworking the system. At the same time, they blasted the administration for thinking the necessary changes could be made in less than a month.

“Setting a 30-day window to fix problems that took years to create was completely unrealistic,” said O’Brien Atkinson, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 70, which represents the bulk of the county’s police officers.

While the county is now consulting with the public safety employees who will have to use this system, Atkinson said administrators should have done that from the beginning.

“Had patrol officers, dispatchers, and other users been involved and consulted with throughout this process, we would not have such a mess now,” he said. “We hope that this is not too little, too late. The missteps over the last several years of delays and Band-Aids may have caused irreparable harm.”

The dispatch system is used by the county police and fire departments, the sheriff’s and state’s attorney’s offices and the detention facilities.

Until the new system is ready, public safety workers will continue to use the computer software in place before Dec. 6, officials said.

The purchase

The county purchased the new dispatch system in January 2008 while buying a new automated record management system. The two programs cost $6.6 million and will cost $300,000 a year to maintain.

According to county officials, the old record management software, also created by Tiburon, would have effectively stopped working on Jan. 1 due to a Y2K-style glitch, officials said.

When the county reverted to the old computer-aided dispatch system on Dec. 27, it continued with the new record management system.

While generally viewed more favorably than the dispatch system, the new records system also has its critics. Atkinson complained yesterday that it requires too much data-entry work by police officers.

“Most our officers were hoping that it would be pulled when the dispatch system was pulled,” he said. “Officers are spending too much time away from their beats, staring at computer screens, searching for cellular signals and trying in vain to complete what had been (under the old system) the simplest of reports.”

Shortly after the new dispatch system was turned on, public safety workers started reporting problems to their unions and The Capital.

Dispatchers complained that the system – with its modern graphic interface – was too complicated to navigate. Firefighters complained that they were being dispatched to calls outside their communities, but not to calls near their stations. And police officers complained that they needed to provide specific addresses of businesses for them to be located by dispatchers.

Ryan said many of the unions’ problems have been addressed.

• By Kyle Stucker

The annual Microsoft Worldwide Public Safety Symposium has been scheduled for March 13 – 15, 2012 in Redmond, WA.

Our Purpose! More than ever, public safety technology can help resolve many challenges on multiple levels.   Capabilities and current infrastructure are strained by complex responses to terrorism, intelligence gathering, and natural disasters.   Public safety personnel need to know more. They need the information faster. They need the ability to merge it from information from other stakeholders and display it in an intuitive format to successfully meet these challenges.   This event will target high level Senior Operation staff, Policy Makers, and Strategists worldwide, working together to deliver safer communities and national security.

The Microsoft Worldwide Public Safety Symposium will increase awareness of how technology can support the Public Safety sector, and provide practical solutions that can be used to address daily challenges.  The event will communicate Microsoft’s commitment to Public Safety and provide the foremost opportunity for our partners to showcase their Public Safety technology solutions.  Suggested Audience for this event includes Senior Operational Staff, Policy-Makers and ICT Strategists working together to deliver safer communities and national security.

The Symposium welcomes our customers and the staff of our sponsoring partners.  A limited number of industry walk-in slots are available to commercial partners that are not sponsors of the event.  The fee to attend is $595. Please contact Rick Deller (v-rickde@microsoft.com) for more information.

We hope you will consider joining us.

NEW ORLEANS — The Rev. Kevin Billiot had never done any police work until April, when he was appointed chief of the department in little Montgomery, near the Kisatchie National Forest in central Louisiana. He found himself dealing with numerous complaints that his two full-time and three part-time officers had been rude to or even mistreated people.

He applied to the Rural Law Enforcement Technology Institute expecting pointers about the most reliable video cameras to mount on squad cars or to have his officers wear so he could check out the complaints. He also hoped that the conference, put on by a division of The Center for Rural Development in Somerset, Ky., would help him find grants to pay for the cameras.

He left with offers for free cameras — not to mention squad cars, laptop computers, stun guns, bulletproof vests and more.

“Other chiefs who attended the conference with me, they literally were lined up offering to donate all types of other equipment that we need in our department,” he said of the Dec. 4-8 conference in Annapolis, Md.

Tax revenues have been falling in the town of 730 for some time.

“Any small town, their finances aren’t in good shape right now,” said Mayor Vera “Susie” Waters, who gets $265 a month as mayor and works full-time as office manager for two pharmacies. “Any kind of equipment we purchase, we rely strictly on grants. When we can get a donation of equipment it’s just a wonderful thing.”

Police officers make $7.50 an hour. Like Billiot, who came to the Grant Parish town as pastor of Northside Baptist Church and is paid $20,000 a year as police chief, all have another full-time job.

Billiot has to ask the Town Council to cover every expense, like the tires he recently bought for a squad car.

“When I arrived here as police chief in April, we didn’t have uniforms. We didn’t even have badges,” Billiot said. “We had two badges we shared among ourselves” and wore polo shirts with embroidered badges, he said.

He said he bought uniforms but hadn’t been able to get duty jackets for work in cold, wet weather. “Our guys are out there wearing $14 windbreakers right now,” Billiot said. He said several departments offered to look for jackets.

The institute itself had been testing officer-worn cameras and donated two, which arrived Wednesday and were being activated for use during the Christmas weekend.

Capt. Rick Grassi of the Tomball, Texas, Police Department offered two unused in-car video systems.

A central Louisiana institute that didn’t want to be identified donated bulletproof vests — the first of the donations to arrive, Billiot said. Cmdr. Dan Brown of the Gila River, Ariz., Police Department offered three used patrol cars.

And when the police chief in Robeline, a village of 170 in nearby Natchitoches Parish, asked about his windfalls, Billiot said he was able to arrange for that department to get two used police cars. He said Chief Mike Marbut will join his trip to get the cars.

“He has two police vehicles that he says are literally going to pieces,” Billiot said.

The National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center’s Small, Rural, Tribal and Border Regional Center holds the conference so people from small and rural departments around the country can get together and share technology tips, said Dave Mather, executive director of the regional center.

The U.S. Department of Justice is among sponsors for the conference, which is free.

Billiot said he learned about it from an email forwarded to all members of the Louisiana Association of Chiefs of Police.

Each applicant had to send in a computer presentation about a problem they are facing or have solved. His was about the complaints and the need for video to check on them. Billiot said he was the only rookie among the 31 participants from 23 states.

Billiot’s department also will get a free website from the conference organizers, saving the agency thousands of dollars, he said.

Billiot, who graduated from the Alexandria Regional Police Academy after his appointment, said he also learned about free training he and his officers can get from the FBI and other agencies. The conference brought “the wealth of knowledge and contacts and networking and information that most of us had not known was out there and available to us,” he said.

___

Online:

http://srtbrc.org/

Citizens now have the ability to report minor crimes online to the Liberty Police Department.

As part of the department’s ongoing efforts to use innovative technology to enhance the efficiency of services, the department has implemented the Desk Officer Online Reporting System, better known as the Citizens Online Police Reporting System. It can be accessed through the department’s website at www.ci.liberty.mo.us/Police or through the “Online Police Reporting” link under “City Services” at the top of each webpage.

The new Web-based reporting system, which is made available through a partnership with Coplogic, allows citizens to file minor vandalism, stealing, identity theft, telephone harassment and lost property information reports over the Internet. Users can print a temporary copy of the report upon submitting it. The report will be reviewed by police personnel and once approved, the person filing the report will receive an e-mail with a copy of the report attached without cost.

The report will transfer into the police department’s records management system and receive the same investigation and statistical analysis as if the report had been filed by a police officer. In addition, the approved report should help citizens who are seeking to file insurance claims related to such crimes, according to the press release.

The online reporting system should be used only when a crime is not in progress and there is no suspect information. Citizens should continue to call the police non-emergency line at 439-4701 for other non-emergency police issues, or 911 for major crimes, emergencies or other issues that require an immediate response from police. With this new system, police officers will have more time to focus on high-priority community needs, officials said.

The new online reporting feature complements www.crimereports.com and www.docview.us.com, both of which are also accessible through the police department’s website. CrimeReports.com enables citizens to access timely reports of crimes that have occurred in a specific neighborhood during a specific time frame. Docview.us.com enables citizens to purchase copies of traffic accident reports online. The Citizens Online Police Reporting System has been in development since 2009 and was paid for with federal stimulus funds.

To let the city know what you think about the website and the new features, email scooke@ci.liberty.mo.us or call 439-4415

Thank you Leesburg PD for hosting our class again!  We had 19 attendees, 7 who came from departments in Louisiana!

Not you, if you’re a taxpayer in York County.

The board of commissioners Wednesday scrapped a county project to link all area police department records, throwing their support instead behind a competing system developed by the Northern York County Regional Police Department.

The commissioners agreed to allow the district attorney’s and sheriff’s offices to participate, meaning every law enforcement agency in the county except one — North Hopewell’s one-man operation — are on board with Northern Regional.

And that’s a key ingredient if a countywide record-management system is to work properly.

When fully operational next year, the system will allow any officer in the county to remotely search for records of contact any police department in York County has had with a person, vehicle or address.

It can help solve crimes because investigators will be able to see connections between incidents in different jurisdictions, and officers will be safer because they’ll have a better idea of what or who they’re dealing with.

The problem is the $1 million the county spent over the years trying to get its own system off the ground.

Michigan-based New World Systems was supposed to have it up and running in 2008, but problems delayed the launch and caused police working on the system to lose faith.

Police departments wouldn’t even help test the system once the glitches were reportedly worked out, opting for Northern Regional’s proven version from Metro Technology Services Inc., based in Wayne, Pa..

“It was taking longer and longer and longer,” Commissioner Steve Chronister said of the county’s effort. “And we weren’t getting the system (police) thought we were getting, that (county officials) thought we were getting. Metro came up with a better system with newer technology, and that’s the system (police) chose to go with.”

He said the county just wants to know if its system even works, because if it doesn’t the county might take legal action against New World Systems.

And what if it does work?

Should taxpayers (the $1 million came from a fee on residents’ cell phone bills, which amounts to a tax) be pleased the discarded system — long delayed and not what anyone wanted to expected — still could have done the job?

Someone dropped the ball on this.

If it was the company, then the commissioners need to do everything in their power to recoup the money.

If it wasn’t New World Systems, then someone needs to be held responsible for wasting $1 million.

Original Article