Cochrane RCMP will be able to spend more time policing and less time behind a desk thanks to an initiative by the province. The province, in an effort to make RCMP officers more visible in their communities, created two Police Reporting and Occurrence System (PROS) Data centres, which are staffed by civilians who will input police report data. The initiative is a pilot program and part of the province's rural crime reduction plan. It's anticipated to help cut down on burdensome administrative tasks for officers. After police officers respond to an incident, the officer can now relay the file information by phone to a police database centre, rather than driving back to their local detachment to manually input it themselves, which was the previous protocol. The civilian staff at the database centre will then input the information as dictated by the responding officer. The files are verified by the officer and an RCMP supervisor for accuracy. "One priority of our rural crime strategy is to give RCMP officers more time in their communities, on the street where they should be to do that," said Kathleen Ganely, Minister of Justice and Solicitor General. Eight months ago, the province announced the first phase of the rural crime strategy plan with RCMP which included hiring 39 new officers, 40 civilian staff in supportive roles. Additionally, a Call Back Unit was introduced in February to divert non-emergency calls, such as scams or reports of minor thefts, to non-frontline RCMP members. According to the province, the unit has diverted 3, 853 calls for service which has saved 9, 390 hours. The data centre pilot project has reduced the time it takes for officers to input data from 30 minutes plus travel time to three minutes and 30 seconds. "Records management is important behind the scenes part of police work. It's vital to the safety of all Albertans but it can also be a time-consuming task. With civilians inputting data at these centres, officers can spend more time where we need them most," Ganely said. The latest phase is hoped to improve RCMP intelligence as well. Since January, property crime is down 11 per cent province-wide and there has been 366 fewer break-ins, 648 fewer vehicle thefts and almost 2,400 fewer thefts, according to RCMP statistics released in September. Ganely added that part of the plan is to increase information sharing between all the province's enforcement agencies including RCMP, municipal police forces, fish and wildlife enforcement and more. "The next phase for crime reduction strategy will focus on changing the way we do business behind the scenes, enhancing the way we respond to victims and offenders and finding new ways to engage with communities across the province," said Acting Commanding Officer John Ferguson, RCMP “K” Division. "I've heard that repeated comment several times, that response times are very slow." Ferguson said he thinks the reduced administrative work will reduce response times of officers, which currently averages 20 to 30 minutes. Since the pilot project launched in June, it has saved 375 hours of data entry time for RCMP frontline members, not including travel time. "That's not to say we don't take a little longer in some cases to get the calls," he said. "I think that members on the road ... they should be able to respond to calls a lot quicker because they are not in the office." The call management initiatives were funded partially by the Government of Alberta’s $8 million investment to the RCMP announced in March 2018.
