Raleigh Police Department Improves Information Access and Analysis with Informer and Dashboards

The Raleigh Police Department serves over 400,000 residents of Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina, and the department is internationally accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Raleigh PD is continually looking for strategies that help prevent crime and identify solutions by analyzing and visualizing large amounts of data quickly and easily to make the best decisions possible to serve and protect the community.

Prior to purchasing Informer, all reports needed by Raleigh PD such as monthly counts (e.g. incidents), offense by crime and others were generated by programs within their current records management system. However, within that system there were limited applications and reports available, according to Karen Whitlow, Systems Analyst at Raleigh PD.

"If a report didn't already exist we would have to, with considerable time and effort, write a program to generate a simple report", says Whitlow. "Once a report was generated, it could then be modified by the IT department at Raleigh PD if it was generated by a program containing our code; however if the report was generated by a program not based on our code, it could not be modified internally but only by a change request to the company providing the program."

This convoluted process made extracting information from the database difficult, and writing one-off applications to create seemingly simple reports took considerable time and effort from the already overburdened technical staff.

Solution | Faster Data Access, More Efficient Use of IT Department

Raleigh PD needed a solution that provided quick access to data while increasing the amount of information readily available. And from a practical perspective the solution had to be very straightforward and intuitive so that report customizations and data analysis could be done in-house.

Raleigh PD selected Informer, a web-based, operational BI platform with a unique architecture that extracts real-time data and provides intuitive report creation, ad-hoc report customization and interactive dashboards.

Informer is faster and easier to use, and with greater control over the data extraction, RPD reduces informational errors.

Several key benefits to using Informer and Dashboards benefited the RPD:

• Saves time
• Quicker access to data
• Access to more data
• Increased productivity with more efficient use of technical staff
• Better information for police officers to make decisions
• Increased performance of police officers who now have access to timely, information

Informer Dashboards also allows Raleigh PD to make a quick assessment of what is going on in a particular district. A graphical representation of what has happened over time makes it easier to find spikes in crime. Identifying trends and allocating resources when and where they are needed is critical to public safety.

Results | Role-specific, Individualized Reports Constructed Quickly, Easily

With Informer, Raleigh PD has seen an increased amount of information made readily available and individualized reports can be constructed quickly and relatively easily.

For example, previously if a detective wanted to know if new supplements were added to her case, she had to access each case individually. Now, an Informer report is e-mailed and available first thing in the morning for quick review with updates for all scheduled cases.

Using Informer, Raleigh PD generates Detective SGT Case Status reports, which include total cases assigned since the beginning of the year, outstanding cases from last year, total new cases in the previous 30 days and outstanding cases without a disposition. These four reports, customized for each detective SGT, are scheduled and emailed on the first of every month to provide counts for everyone in their squad. Previously, these counts were manually maintained or calculated by each detective SGT.

Data validation is critical in an organization like Raleigh PD, so they have also created a report in order to view and validate data, e.g. dates and districts.

Public safety agencies like Raleigh PD generate volumes of critical data each day such as time, location, and unit response, accidents, arrest reports, citations, dispositions, and more. Using Informer, Raleigh PD can now leverage that data and interactively analyze it, deliver personalized reports and visualize key information using Informer dashboards. In addition to freeing employees from manually developing reports, Informer facilitates decision-making by providing validated, reliable, and personalized information in a timely manner.