City of Buffalo Police Transition to NIBRS by Updating Criminal History Records Management System

The National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) is an effort to expand the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) into a nationally representative system of incident-based crime statistics. BJS and the FBI are implementing NCS-X with the support of other Department of Justice agencies, including the Office for Victims of Crime. The goal of NCS-X is to enroll a sample of 400 scientifically selected law enforcement agencies to submit data to NIBRS; when these 400 new NIBRS-reporting agencies are combined with the more than 6,600 agencies that reported to NIBRS as of 2015, the nation will have a nationally representative system of incident-based crime statistics drawn from the operational data systems of local police departments. These incident-based data will draw upon the attributes and circumstances of criminal incidents and allow for more detailed and transparent descriptions of crime in communities. The current mechanism by which local law enforcement (LE) agencies report data to the FBI’s NIBRS, in general, is for local LE agencies to submit data to their state UCR reporting program, and then for the state UCR program to report those data to the FBI. While the FBI does accept NIBRS data directly from a small number of law enforcement agencies, the highly preferred route of reporting is through the state UCR program. The FY2017 Phase VI solicitation furthers the goals of the NCS-X initiative by providing funding to small and medium sized agencies in the NCS-X sample in order to assist these agencies to transition to NIBRS reporting or to develop a comprehensive plan for transitioning to NIBRS reporting via the state pipeline. Specifically, funding under this solicitation targeted the NCS-X sample of agencies with fewer than 750 or more sworn officers that are (1) are located in states in which the state UCR Programs currently have or will have by October 2017 a state IBR standard; (2) currently do not report incident-based data to their state UCR Program or to the FBI’s NIBRS; (3) have not previously received funding to transition to IBR/NIBRS; and (4) are not already in the process of transitioning to IBR/NIBRS.

Under the current award, Buffalo PD will upgrade their existing record management system (RMS) to become NIBRS capable. The applicant will rely on the vendor to complete the technical work associated with the transition and to facilitate testing of the data submissions with the NY State UCR Program. The Buffalo PD is part of a consortium RMS with other agencies in Erie County, NY; establishing NIBRS compliance through Buffalo will facilitate the transition of the other agencies that are part of the Erie consortium. Just over half of the total funding request is for training of both sworn and non-sworn BPD staff. That training can then be utilized to train others in the consortium.

(CA/NCF)