A new plan targeting rural crime will see more officers on patrol and fewer in the office burdened by paperwork, says the RCMP.
The force introduced new data and call centres Tuesday as part of a pilot project designed to lessen the paperwork for frontline officers.
The new centres employ civilians to handle non-priority calls, making officers more free to respond to time-sensitive events.
“It’s about that visibility. It’s about staying out there so we can be seen in the community,” said John Ferguson, acting commander of the RCMP K Division. “Our physical presence is a deterrent.”
In the new system, an officer enters information into the RCMP database by phone. The civilian staff at the Police Reporting and Occurrence System (PROS) Data Centre then collects and files the information as needed. Before, officers had to return to the detachment to manually update police files or do so remotely.
The Call Back Unit is staffed by experienced RCMP members who divert calls that are non-time sensitive or non-threatening to the public. If more investigation is needed than the Call Back Unit provides, then the file will be transferred to the frontline for follow up.
Like before, RCMP will continue to immediately respond to emergency calls with the highest priority.
During a ride-a-long, Cst. Dalton Rouse of the Morinville RCMP told CTV Edmonton’s David Ewasuk the changes “have been a really good thing.”
“The more people we can have in police cars, the better it’s going to be for the community and individual officers as well.”
RCMP implemented the data and call initiatives in February. Since then, the call-back centre has diverted and answered 3,853 calls which normally would have been dispatched to RCMP frontline members. This saved approximately 9,390 hours, representing nine general duty constables’ workloads in one year, said the RCMP.
The data centre has reduced the amount of time officers spend on data entry.
With files from David Ewasuk
