FY18 - MPD Achieving NIBRS Compliance

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 currently report to NIBRS, 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 FY2018 solicitation furthers the goals of the NCS-X initiative by providing funding to the remaining states and local agencies in the NCS-X sample in order to assist them transition to NIBRS reporting.

The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) is the primary law enforcement agency for the capital city of the United States, Washington, DC. MPDC currently has over 3,800 sworn officers and nearly 640 civilian staff and serves an area of 68 square miles with a population of roughly 700,000. MPDC currently utilizes the on-premises version of the Mark43 Cobalt RMS. In addition to MPDC, all law enforcement agencies conducting arrests in the DC city limits are required to enter that arrest information into MPDC’s RMS. This includes approximately 40 federal agencies, and equates to an estimated 11,000 Cobalt RMS end users.

MPDC’s current RMS system is NIBRS-capable; Mark43 can provide that functionality, drawing on their experience configuring NIBRS within their current cloud RMS product, which is purportedly NIBRS compliant. Upgrading the MPDC on-premises version of the Cobalt RMS will require additional data elements, edits checks and file extraction protocols be incorporated across both reporting and arrest modules. All of the effort associated with this NIBRS transition is focused through the delivery of Mark43 professional services, guided by agency contracted Quality Assurance and Business Analyst resources.

Funds are requested for the acquisition of these professional services and contract personnel. The proposal does not include any requested funding for hardware or other technical items. The responsibilities of the proposed contracted staff include project management and support, managing data submission and user acceptance testing, and successful extraction of data for certification with the FBI.

(CA/NCF)