by John Futty, The Columbus Dispatch
Sitting in his parked cruiser, Columbus Police Officer Roy Lisath typed a series of commands on a keyboard, instantly sending a detailed theft report to Downtown headquarters.
“This is just the doorway to where technology will take us,” said Lisath, who recently became the first Columbus police officer to electronically file crime reports from the field.
The days of handwritten police reports, delivered at the end of a shift and typed into the system by a records technician 48 hours to 72 hours later, are nearing an end for the Columbus Division of Police.
“I’m one of the most enthusiastic people about this system,” Lisath said. “It will be so much easier, so much quicker for us and for the public.”
And for anyone wanting a better understanding of crime in the city, state and nation.
The technology is part of the city’s efforts to comply with the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which the FBI established more than a decade ago as an improvement from its Uniform Crime Report program.
The 2001 Uniform Crime Report was released in late October, once again highlighting the limitations of a national crime-reporting system that has been in place since 1930.
The annual report measures eight crimes: murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft, motor-vehicle theft and arson.
The report provides raw numbers for each offense but few details about the nature of the crimes.
And the numbers themselves can be misleading. Under the FBI’s hierarchy rule, only the most serious offense in any criminal act is in the Uniform Crime Report.
For example, if someone is robbed, raped and murdered, only the murder is reported.
The NIBRS records every incident and arrest for 22 criminal offenses.
In addition to raw numbers, the system keeps track of victims’ and offenders’ names, time and place of the crime and what was taken.
Because of the technological demands of the system, getting law-enforcement agencies to use it has been a slow process. Ohio is one of 22 states certified for NIBRS, but law enforcement that use it cover only about 30 percent of the state’s population.
Of Ohio’s large cities, Akron, Cincinnati and Dayton are reporting their criminal data through NIBRS, which is being administered in the state by the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services.
Columbus, Canton, Cleveland, Toledo and Youngstown are expected to begin submitting data in 2003.
Domingo Herraiz, director of the state agency, said the goal is to have 90 percent of Ohio law-enforcement agencies submitting data by 2005.
Like the Uniform Crime Report, contributing to NIBRS is voluntary, making it unlikely that participation will ever be 100 percent.
Dayton police began using the system four years ago and said they find it invaluable in investigating patterns of crime and links between incidents.
“We look at our data as a way to solve crimes, not just count crimes,” said Bob Puz, a retired Dayton police detective who was rehired to help with the NIBRS. “There’s less emphasis on historical data, of tracking what happened from one year to the next.”
Columbus police resisted the new program for years because it was more costly and complicated than the old system, but they were enticed in part by federal grants that paid nearly all of the $ 1.3 million cost for the technology, said Deputy Chief Antone Lanata.
Among the advantages of the system will be getting an in-depth, up-to-the-minute snapshot of crime in Columbus, he said.
“We can assign officers according to when and where crimes are occurring. About 89 percent of our budget goes to personnel, so let’s use people as efficiently as possible.”
Lisath, a field training officer, is the only member of the division using the system on patrol, but he will be joined by about 20 officers in mid-November. By 2003, every Columbus patrol officer will be using the system, Lanata said.
No one expects the summary Uniform Crime Reports to disappear when the NIBRS is fully in place. Researchers, in particular, want to preserve that link to past data.
“We have 70 years’ worth of data covered in a uniform fashion,” said Richard Lundman, an Ohio State University sociology professor who focuses on crime. “We don’t want to lose the continuity of that information by abruptly changing to a new system. It’s a good idea, but it must not replace Uniform Crime Reports.”