After viewing a demonstration of the City of Pittsburgh’s Automated Police Reporting System (APRS), a major metropolitan school district asked B-Three Solutions to adapt APRS into a system that would meet the needs of its school police. B-Three developed APRS for the City, and has maintained and expanded the system in the years since its original roll-out.
The automated reporting system created for the school police consists of:
Components of the current APRS, unchanged except for minor modifications, such as headings and other client-specific details.
Components of the current APRS, significantly modified to meet the client’s requirements.
New components, created specifically for the client and integrated into the its system.
One significant new component is a dispatch system that maintains the pool of available officers, enabling a dispatcher to assign one of those available officers to an incident. A report number is generated, and basic information about the incident is captured, so that the officer does not need to re-enter that that information when filling out a report.
The system provides for two important data links:
Student and parent data, including addresses, is obtained from the SQL-based Student Information System, and used to auto-populate significant portions of the school police reports.
Through a capability built into the system for implementation in the future, authorized personnel will have the ability to transmit data from completed reports to the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.
In addition to computerized versions of the school police’s incident-related reports, the system includes these additional output options:
Statistical Report. Users can customize this on-demand report in the following ways:
User-specified parameters (officer, school, neighborhood, date range).
User-specified sort sequence (officer, school, neighborhood).
User-specified totals (incident type, school, officer).
Data Dump in Spreadsheet-Compatible Format. This option is used for reports that the school district must submit to state officials.
With the new system in place, each report can now be completed by the reporting officer, submitted for supervisor approval, edited, printed, and approved electronically. Authorized users can search, view, and batch-print the reports. The database of reports can be searched by reporting officer, incident location, school, arrestee/suspect name, witness name, and/or incident type.
In addition to the user manual for the new system, B-Three delivered comprehensive technical documentation. Separate “train-the-trainer” sessions were conducted for system administrators, end users, and technical support personnel