SAN JOSE, Calif.—San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore, who was just sworn into office last week (Feb. 24), unveiled the Automated Field Reporting and Records Management System (AFRRMS) at City Hall on Tuesday. The computerized system, which the new chief highlighted during his swearing-in ceremony, is aimed at bringing police records into the digital age.
“We have been operating on a paper-based system for police records for far too long. This is something that should have been done 10 years ago… We tried, we failed. We are in a no fail mode [now],” declared Chief Moore to the city council.
The San Jose City Council adopted an ordinance on Tuesday paving the way for the police department to forge ahead with phases 1–3 of the project with a total cost of $11 million, mainly because Chief Moore’s staff have already received $8.7 million in grant money to initiate the project.
“This is a grant-funded project that has taken us that long to be able to assemble the millions in grant dollars that were required to bring it before you today,” said Moore. The police department has talked about upgrading the records management system for years.
“We have the funding. We have the support. This will work; we’ll make sure that it works,” said Chief Moore.
Mayor Reed was very pleased to support the project and commented that it was 10 years ago that then officer Moore talked with Reed about the AFRRMS project. “I’ve been through the ups and the downs and I always thought that this day would never come… It could not come at a better time when we are stressed for not having enough officers,” said Reed.
Chief Moore explained that the new AFRRMS will allow police officers to do real-time analysis from the patrol car, improve data quality, increase timeliness of field event entry, increase efficiency of police officers and support staff, provide information faster to customers and residences, support post-9/11-era efforts to share information with law enforcement agencies across the country, and provide information to other states to help them solve crimes.
The contract for programming and maintenance has been awarded to Versaterm, whose proposal won full approval from the staff, without contest.
Over 100,000 field reports are hand entered into the current San Jose Police Department Records Management System (RMS). Overtime hours are often paid for the entry of these reports which comes at a high price for the city.
Melanie Jimenez, UASI Project Planner with the San Jose Police Department, said during the City Hall meeting that the system will completely automate the workflow of the department.
“We will not only be able to gain efficiencies but be able to reduce our current backlogs and reports,” said Jimenez.
Ms. Jimenez performed statistics on the current data entry to drive the necessity of the new AFRRMS home. “We were running 14 [days] behind in entry of crime reports and 74 [days] in vehicle reports,” said Jimenez.
The police department’s current RMS system was put in place in 1997 and according to Tamara Becker, San Jose Police Department OSSD Division Manager who has worked on the AFRRMS for over four years, “We are no longer able to sustain this system either through upgrades or the current management needs for such a labor intense system,” suggesting that the system has become unmanageable.
“It’s very hard to locate data when we are trying to respond to public requests for information,” she said.
“This is definitely way overdue,” said former police officer and current councilmember Pete Constant, who was pictured 19 years ago on the front page of the Mercury News holding a laptop in hand and quoted as saying how great automated field reporting was going to be, which never materialized, until now.
Councilmember Ash Kalra also commented on the efficiency of the new AFRRMS. “Officers will have more time to do their work in the field rather than spending so much of their time hand writing out those police reports,” said Kalra.
The city council unanimously adopted the ordinance giving the green light to the police department to use the grant money, but Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio pointed out that some of the future costs of the AFRRMS may come from the city’s general fund.
“Yes, there will be some costs, exposure to the general fund in future years for the maintenance… Even in that future year we may still be having a deficit; it will probably be a good tradeoff to be spending that money on that purpose,” said Oliverio.
Ms. Jimenez recognized the $966,000 shortfall at Phase 3 of the project, but mentioned that they will be applying for grants within the fiscal year to cover the deficiency.
“We have been operating on a paper-based system for police records for far too long. This is something that should have been done 10 years ago… We tried, we failed. We are in a no fail mode [now],” declared Chief Moore to the city council.
The San Jose City Council adopted an ordinance on Tuesday paving the way for the police department to forge ahead with phases 1–3 of the project with a total cost of $11 million, mainly because Chief Moore’s staff have already received $8.7 million in grant money to initiate the project.
“This is a grant-funded project that has taken us that long to be able to assemble the millions in grant dollars that were required to bring it before you today,” said Moore. The police department has talked about upgrading the records management system for years.
“We have the funding. We have the support. This will work; we’ll make sure that it works,” said Chief Moore.
Mayor Reed was very pleased to support the project and commented that it was 10 years ago that then officer Moore talked with Reed about the AFRRMS project. “I’ve been through the ups and the downs and I always thought that this day would never come… It could not come at a better time when we are stressed for not having enough officers,” said Reed.
Chief Moore explained that the new AFRRMS will allow police officers to do real-time analysis from the patrol car, improve data quality, increase timeliness of field event entry, increase efficiency of police officers and support staff, provide information faster to customers and residences, support post-9/11-era efforts to share information with law enforcement agencies across the country, and provide information to other states to help them solve crimes.
The contract for programming and maintenance has been awarded to Versaterm, whose proposal won full approval from the staff, without contest.
Over 100,000 field reports are hand entered into the current San Jose Police Department Records Management System (RMS). Overtime hours are often paid for the entry of these reports which comes at a high price for the city.
Melanie Jimenez, UASI Project Planner with the San Jose Police Department, said during the City Hall meeting that the system will completely automate the workflow of the department.
“We will not only be able to gain efficiencies but be able to reduce our current backlogs and reports,” said Jimenez.
Ms. Jimenez performed statistics on the current data entry to drive the necessity of the new AFRRMS home. “We were running 14 [days] behind in entry of crime reports and 74 [days] in vehicle reports,” said Jimenez.
The police department’s current RMS system was put in place in 1997 and according to Tamara Becker, San Jose Police Department OSSD Division Manager who has worked on the AFRRMS for over four years, “We are no longer able to sustain this system either through upgrades or the current management needs for such a labor intense system,” suggesting that the system has become unmanageable.
“It’s very hard to locate data when we are trying to respond to public requests for information,” she said.
“This is definitely way overdue,” said former police officer and current councilmember Pete Constant, who was pictured 19 years ago on the front page of the Mercury News holding a laptop in hand and quoted as saying how great automated field reporting was going to be, which never materialized, until now.
Councilmember Ash Kalra also commented on the efficiency of the new AFRRMS. “Officers will have more time to do their work in the field rather than spending so much of their time hand writing out those police reports,” said Kalra.
The city council unanimously adopted the ordinance giving the green light to the police department to use the grant money, but Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio pointed out that some of the future costs of the AFRRMS may come from the city’s general fund.
“Yes, there will be some costs, exposure to the general fund in future years for the maintenance… Even in that future year we may still be having a deficit; it will probably be a good tradeoff to be spending that money on that purpose,” said Oliverio.
Ms. Jimenez recognized the $966,000 shortfall at Phase 3 of the project, but mentioned that they will be applying for grants within the fiscal year to cover the deficiency.
