One of Canada’s Busiest Police Services Pioneers Mobile Data Capture with NicheRMS

Regina Police Service

Regina Police Service (RPS) serves a population of 200,000 over an area of approximately 40 square miles. The 352 officers and 130 civilians on staff field 74,000 calls for service per year, with an average of over 200 calls per officer, one of the highest in Canada. RPS uses an EVDO (300 kb/s) data network with Panasonic CF29s featuring the full Niche client deployed in 51 cruisers.

REGINA POLICE AND NICHE RMS

Regina is one of the most sophisticated users of NicheRMS functionality, including the electronic transfer of case files to the provincial prosecuting authorities. Frontline officers perform live data capture, entering occurrences either in-car or on a desktop. In arrest cases, they begin the data capture process in Niche’s custody functionality.

Regina has a high incidence of repeat offenders, and NicheRMS has eliminated a vast amount of data duplication. A search of the RMS provides officers with vital information that they can quickly link to the existing data, enabling them to quickly verify current information and update the database. Officer entry and linking is happening in near-real time, and Regina has no data entry backlog despite being one of Canada’s busiest municipal police services.

Other Niche capabilities Regina uses include: case management, tasking and quality assurance through records staff, property, special projects, electronic Crown packages and disclosure, and modus operandi.

THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

Regina selected Niche as part of a five-year plan developed by Chief Cal Johnston to implement an integrated CAD, radio, and RMS system.

In 2001, Regina’s executive had made a decision to look at ways they could improve efficiencies, with direct data entry for officers being a central requirement. They formed an Information Management Technology Committee (IMTC) from four areas of the service — finance, IT, patrol supervisors and police information management — whose mandate was to replace Regina’s CAD and RMS systems. The RMS selection process featured a six-month business process review focused on six major RMS-related business change items:

• File numbering from CAD
• Linking of entities for officers from dispatch
• Supervisor approval of incidents
• When and who creates tasks
• The handling of found property
• Management of built-in business rules

Once NicheRMS was selected as the best product to meet these needs, RPS records management personnel played a significant role in its implementation, with six people responsible for all Niche training, quality assurance, and case management. RPS held regular executive meetings with the IMTC to discuss concerns and their solutions throughout the process, and dedicated five days of training to each officer, delivering 20,000 hours of training in six months.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• RPS states that the choice to form a committee drawn from service members rather than deploying a team solely to the RMS rollout was a significant factor in the success of the implementation.
• As the IMTC were members of the day-to-day business, they were able to keep the knowledge base of business practices up to date, while managing their responsibilities in tandem with the Niche implementation.
• This methodology enabled each team member to contribute expertise and insight from their area of the service