By Roman Gokhman
Inside Bay Area
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Residents of Livermore have a new way to report some property crimes. Beside calling police or hailing down a patrol car, they can now go online and file a report without having an officer come to their front door.
“If people really feel it’s important for the police to come out ... they will call,” Livermore city Councilwoman Marj Leider said. “But otherwise, it saves a lot of paperwork ... and lets officers patrol the streets. The Police Department has been doing a great job of modernizing.”
The department has been testing the new system, which was developed by an officer in Fremont, for the past four months, Lt. Scott Trudeau said. Now it’s ready to let everyone know about it.
Reports are accepted for lost property, theft, vandalism, vehicle burglary and harassing phone calls.
Before filing the report, residents start with five statements. Only if the answer to all five is “yes” should an online report be filed.
They are:
- The crime or incident is not an emergency.
- The crime or incident occurred in Livermore city limits.
- It did not occur on a state highway (such as Highway 84 or Interstate 580).
- In a theft, the victim does not have the complete serial number on the stolen item.
- There are no known suspects.
The report can be filed by an individual or on behalf of a business and the applicant needs to supply some personal information — including name, address, date of birth and voluntary information — and some details of the crime and property stolen.
After the online forms are filled out, the applicants need to wait until the screen reports, “Your report has been submitted,” and is given a report number. The page should be printed out.
If the department decides further investigation is needed, the applicant will be contacted.
The online form is clearly marked with a warning, but for anyone who does not see it, Trudeau reminds that filing a false police report is a crime, even on the Web.
Trudeau said he checks each e-mail report himself.
The program, officially called Cop Logic, was developed by Fremont police Officer Randy Burkhammer.
Burkhammer said he came up with the idea in 2003, while he was learning Flash programming.
His reasoning for why it would work: While police agencies get sent e-mails with tips, they do not have have a way to format the information along with other reports.
Burkhammer gathered some friends and started a company that sells the program to other law enforcement agencies. There are now 50 departments through out the country, from the Suffolk County Police Department in New York to the San Francisco Police Department.
“The company has done well,” he said. “We’ve stayed in the black, but I’m not getting ready to retire.”
Fremont police has been using Cop Logic since 2004, Detective Bill Veteran said.
More than 25 percent of all crime reports at the department are now filed online, he said. That comes out to 400 a month.
“They are reviewed each morning by our desk officer,” he said. “The officer has the discretion to forward it to our investigative unit.”
If the report is not forwarded, any identifying information on a missing item is placed into a system, “just as if an officer went out and took a cold report,” Veteran said.
“It’s no secret we have a manpower challenge, and it’s great that our citizens can file a report when an officer is not available to come out,” he said.
Copyright 2007 Tri-Valley Herald