COPLINK Knowledge Management for Law Enforcement: Text Analysis, Visualization and Collaboration

Abstract

Crime and police report information is rapidly migrating from paper records to automated records management databases. Most mid and large sized police agencies have such systems that provide access to information by their own personnel, but lack any efficient manner by which to provide that information to other agencies. Criminals show no regard for jurisdictional boundaries and in fact take advantage of the lack of communication across jurisdictions. Federal standards initiatives such as the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS, US Department of Justice 1998), are attempting to provide reporting standards to police agencies to facilitate future reporting and information sharing among agencies as these electronic reporting systems become more widespread. We integrated platform-independence, stability, scalability, and an intuitive graphical user interface to develop the COPLINK system, which is currently being deployed at Tucson Police Department (TPD). User evaluations of the application allowed us to study the impact of COPLINK on law enforcement personnel as well as to identify requirements for improving the system and extending the project. We are currently in the process of extending the functionality of COPLINK in several areas. These include textual analysis, collaboration, visualization and geo-mapping.