SCPD Transition to National Incident-Based Reporting

The National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) is an effort to expand the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) into a nationally representative system of incident-based crime statistics. BJS and the FBI are implementing NCS-X with the support of other Department of Justice agencies, including the Office for Victims of Crime. The goal of NCS-X is to enroll a sample of 400 scientifically selected law enforcement agencies to submit data to NIBRS; when these 400 new NIBRS-reporting agencies are combined with the more than 6,600 agencies that currently report to NIBRS, the nation will have a nationally representative system of incident-based crime statistics drawn from the operational data systems of local police departments. These incident-based data will draw upon the attributes and circumstances of criminal incidents and allow for more detailed and transparent descriptions of crime in communities. The current mechanism by which local law enforcement (LE) agencies report data to the FBI’s NIBRS, in general, is for local LE agencies to submit data to their state UCR reporting program, and then for the state UCR program to report those data to the FBI. While the FBI does accept NIBRS data directly from a small number of law enforcement agencies, the highly preferred route of reporting is through the state UCR program. The FY2018 solicitation furthers the goals of the NCS-X initiative by providing funding to the remaining states and local agencies in the NCS-X sample in order to assist them transition to NIBRS reporting.

Santa Clara Police Department (SCPD) is working with Hexagon to build and configure the NIBRS-compliant WebRMS and Field-Based Reporting (FBR) applications. Hexagon has assured that the WebRMS application will be configured to collect federally mandated NIBRS data upon go-live. Additional professional services will be required to make the WebRMS compliant with California-specific IBR CANIBRS and to validate and submit NIBRS data to the state.

The City of Santa Clara will rely upon vendor provided end-user training utilizing a train-the-trainer method to teach SCPD staff how to collect, audit, and submit NIBRS and CANIBRS reports.

Additionally, the agency has obtained $3 million specifically towards a new computer aided dispatching and records management system (CAD/RMS) that will improve the agency’s ability to collect a number of the required IBR/NIBRS data elements. These funds have already been dedicated to the project, and the necessary work to transition to the Hexagon product is well underway with an anticipated go-live date in November 2018. Because the CA DOJ has not yet announced data elements for CIBRS, Hexagon is not yet able to incorporate those elements into the RMS or build an interface for submitting the data. The agency needs to contact for professional assistance from both Hexagon and the City’s contract vendor for technical support for these activities.

(CA/NCF)