The goal is to make it easier for the community to get in touch with the agency, as well as free up the 911 dispatch for emergency response, said Scott Hoffman, the agency's police technologies manager.
The tool, part of a public safety system developed by Motorola Solutions, would only be available for certain types of non-emergency situations. Think things like property damage, or suspected credit card fraud, Hoffman said.
By inviting people to report those less urgent incidents through a separate pipeline, he estimated calls to dispatch could go down by as much as 15%.
The agency previously offered an online reporting tool, but it was too buggy to use effectively, Hoffman said. It was duplicating information within the police department's data management system, so the agency took it offline.
When the old system was still available, though, the agency did see an increase in reporting — it got about 50 or 60 online online submissions a day, according to Hoffman said.
Casper City Council gave the department the go-ahead to purchase the new tool in early April. The technology will cost a total of $65,750 over the next five years, according to a March 28 memo from Hoffman and Casper Police Chief Keith McPheeters to Casper City Manager Carter Napier.
The new product will provide the same services as the old one, plus a few additional features.
The module accommodates digital evidence collection, anonymous tipping and crime mapping, for example, Hoffman said. There's even a feature that allows residents to register their camera with the Casper Police Department.
"So if a business downtown has graffiti every week or somebody's burglarizing — and they give us the okay to actually get into that camera that would that would help as well," Hoffman said.
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