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Grant will fund one year trial of 'Coplogic' online reporting

Date: 12/13/2010

Dec. 13, 2010

By Chris Maza

Reminder Assistant Editor

EAST LONGMEADOW -- In the near future, the East Longmeadow Police Department will begin offering a new option for reporting crimes.

Police Chief Doug Mellis told the Board of Selectmen on Dec. 7 that the department will take advantage of a grant from the Western Mass. Law Enforcement Council to use Coplogic's Online Citizen Police Reporting services for a trial period of one year.

"The grant will pay for the program and the maintenance for one year, so we're going to give it a try," Mellis told Reminder Publications.

Coplogic will give town residents the option of reporting crimes not of a serious or life-threatening nature by filling out a form online, which will be sent to the Police Department.

"The goal is to reduce the number of calls our officers have to respond to," Mellis said, adding that the program is designed specifically for "run of the mill" complaints, such as vandalism, vehicle break-ins or traffic complaints.

More serious calls, such as murder, rape and burglaries in progress, will not be reportable via the Internet.

The program offers citizens an opportunity to take their time in filing a report, which can often be a stressful process. Mellis hopes this will increase the accuracy of reports, in addition to allowing officers to be available to respond to more serious crimes that require police involvement.

Once a report is filed, it will be sent electronically to the police department where an officer will review the information. If everything is entered correctly and the data appears to be in order, the officer will accept the report and respond to the complainant with a case number.

Any serial numbers of stolen items will be included in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Crime Information Center database, so recovered items may be cross-referenced with a comprehensive nationwide list.

Mellis added that with the program, complainants may also add details to the report that may have been omitted.

He also assured residents that online complaints and reports would not be pushed aside.

"Some online reports we will still respond to," he said. "We may find that we need to have an officer respond in certain cases to look for more evidence or gather more information."

He also stressed Coplogic will not be the sole means of filing a report or hat officers will not respond to less urgent or non-life-threatening calls.

"That will still happen," Mellis said. "We're not going to tell you you have to [report a crime] online. It's going to be an option."

The department hopes to have the program ready for use by the start of January, 2011. It will be accessible through the Police Department's Web site at http://www.eastlongmeadowma.gov/departments/police.htm .

Mellis said it was imperative that the department and the town closely examine the effectiveness of the program because, after the one-year grant expires, the town will be responsible for at least $3,000 worth of yearly maintenance. East Longmeadow no longer has its community policing grant, from which Mellis said he could have taken funds to pay for extending the program.

"We're going to work out some kind of measuring guidelines to figure out if this program is worth keeping," Mellis said. "A lot of it is going to be on the residents of the town and whether or not they are using it. It's trial and error and we'll see if it takes off."



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