Patrolling San Antonio-based Alamo Colleges can get complicated. The college system, which is the second largest in Texas, has five major campuses, seven satellite campuses, approximately 100,000 students and more than 5,000 faculty and staff. And until 2007, the only records management system the school’s police department had was paper-based. Not ­surprisingly, inefficiencies were the rule rather than the exception.

“Our officers were handwriting their reports,” recalls Chief of Police Don Adams. “We were faxing reports all over the place, and keeping two sets of reports.”

And then there were the delays. “It would take days for a report to finally make it to the investigator,” the chief continues. “It was taking about a week or two for these things to get finalized. That was a big issue.”

Sharing information among officers fared no better, adds Adams, who notes, “We didn’t have any way of allowing the officers to know what was going on at all the campuses. They would walk in blind everyday to their new campus.”

He figured that if his officers could ­instantly communicate with each other, have records at their fingertips, and share them across the institution’s sprawling campus system, his department could respond to incidents with much greater efficiency. Today, they do just that.

It happened thanks to a records management software program called Crimestar RMS, offered by Crimestar Corp., that integrates multiple reporting processes. It captures and stores details on a variety of law enforcement documents, such as accident reports, citations, field interviews, incident/crime reports, sex and narcotics registrants, warrants and firearms registration. The software also offers computer-aided dispatch and mobile digital ­communications programs.

With the new RMS installed, the waste, information-sharing challenges and delays that resulted from officers using a paper-based reporting process are history. Today, an Alamo Colleges officer can sit at a police department computer at any of the campuses and launch records searches. He or she can even specify a campus to find out what is happening at that particular location.

Software Connects Computers at All 12 Campuses
Alamo Colleges administrators have come to appreciate how the software is keeping its police force so interconnected and campuses safe. First is its ability to be applied on all of the school’s campuses. “An officer can log onto any of our computers and pull up data,” says the chief. “Because we’re so spread out, the networking ability was a key feature.”

Second, the new system did not require additional modules that would increase the cost of the system. Third, Adams likes the fact that the solution is a base records management system, yet includes many capabilities. An example is the “Kickback Messages” feature, which allows police supervisors who review reports to easily get messages and instructions routed back to reporting officers.

When a user/officer signs onto a computer, Crimestar RMS automatically checks to see if there are any “kickback” messages, and displays them. In addition, these messages can be recalled from the main program menu at any time. Then, officers can recall the document being referenced and make the needed changes.

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