CrimeView Dashboard helps fight crime in real-time

Published 9 August 2011

In an effort to share information in an easily manageable format, the Chesapeake Police Department in Virginia recently implemented the CrimeView Dashboard; CrimeView is a cloud-based software system that allows an entire agency to monitor criminal activity in real-time with maps, charts, and reports

Law enforcement agencies now have a deluge of information readily available to them thanks to new technologies, but keeping officers from becoming inundated with too much information is now becoming an issue.

In an effort to share information in an easily manageable format, the Chesapeake Police Department in Virginia recently implemented the CrimeView Dashboard.

CrimeView is a cloud-based software system that allows an entire agency to monitor criminal activity in real-time with maps, charts, and reports.

Police Chief Kelvin Wright says that the department “intends to use CrimeView Dashboard at all levels in the department. Be it Patrol Operations, Investigations or management, we believe that this tool will help make us more efficient and effective in delivering law enforcement services.”

CrimeView automatically pulls data from several sources and consolidates them into simple visual displays like density maps and trend charts. In addition the Chesapeake police have integrated several other databases into the system to also include warrants, dispatches, and arrest information.

In practice patrol officers are using the software tool to get a better perspective on their surroundings while commanders can instantly assess overall activity and how to distribute resources accordingly.

CrimeView Dashboard has proven to be a tremendous tool for asset distribution and increased efficiency for responding to crimes in progress,” said Sergeant Ernest Jefferies. “The ability to identify the trends and construct roll call training scenarios for targeted areas is a powerful swing in police operations. The same maps used to display the crimes and geographic area for the training, can also be accessed by the supervisor in the field for managing an event. This prior planning and training has allowed organized, synergistic responses and produced numerous arrests from crimes in progress.”

In addition, Bianca Conn, the lead Crime Analyst at Chesapeake, said that the technology automates a lot of existing processes, freeing up officers to do more in-depth investigative work.

“The CrimeView Enterprise suite of solutions has revolutionized the day-to-day operations of the Chesapeake Police Department’s Crime Analysis Unit,” she said. “The automated analysis and mapping tools allow the crime analysts to focus more time on analyzing trends and hot spots rather than performing monotonous data extractions or mapping processes.“