Online reporting site gaining popularity: police
Posted Sep 20, 2011 05:31:33 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Regional Police brass say a pilot project that allows citizens to report non-urgent incidents online has been a hit.
Police officials presented a report to the city’s Board of Police Commissioners Monday, showing it’s been so succesful that the program will be extended until next June.
More than 130,000 calls are made to the Halifax Regional Police incident reporting phone line, a massive number that left many people facing a long wait on hold – or choosing to simply hang up and not report a crime.
Capt. Kevin Tulk says from June to August, the new non-urgent incident website received more than 5000 hits and more than 800 reports haev been filed.
“In the first month, we had a number and in the second month it was almost in the same, but in August it went up about 30 per cent,” he said. “From what I’m seeing this month, it’s going to go up again.”
Tulk says more and more residents are turning to the website, including businesses like the NSLC – which now uses it exclusivley to report all thefts that aren’t in progress.
“The Department of Justice uses it, the Nova Scotia Corrections Centre uses it to report all their property damage and things like that,” he said.
Tulk says feedback has been extremely positive so far, with citizens reporting everything from theft to damaged vehicles – but it still has some kinks to be ironed out.
“Not everybody understands exactly what type of report they’re making,” he said. “So it’s just some of the terminology, although we tried to make it as simple as we could for the general public to understand, sometimes people just do the wrong thing.”
Tulk says even the RCMP have bought into the program, and although reports for RCMP jurisdictions are currently passed on through the HRP website, he expects the Mounties to have their own system in place very soon.
