By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Big changes will be coming to the way reporting crimes online will work for the St. Joseph Police department
St. Joseph Police Chief Chris Connally says the police department has actually had online reporting for about 15 years.
"It was developed in house and it didn't integrate with our system so, you would do the online report and then we had a civilian that takes reports over the phone that in his spare time would integrate that into our system," Connally tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "And we had some success with that, of course during COVID we had to emphasize a lot more online reporting."
Connally says recently the station was contacted by a foundation that would provide funds to help with anything the police station will need.
Now, Connally says, thanks to that donation and funds the department had available, the system will be changing to one the department didn't build.
"One that's commonly used across the country through LexisNexis and it integrates directly into our records management system," Connally explains. "And so, we're actually in the process of implementing this now we think the new system will be fully up and running at the end of August."
Connally says not only will the new system integrate into the department's records filing system, it will also be more customer friendly.
"This system when a person calls in on their phone, when they're referred to online reporting, they'll be told we're going to refer this to online reporting, you'll receive a text with a link and you hit the link and you can go straight into the report," Connally says. "So, you don't have to go to our website and find the online reporting and then open up the online reporting and fill it out, you'll just immediately be sent a link."
Connally says so many people do things on their phone that receiving the link will allow the report to be filed more quickly and efficiently.