Woodland Police Department NIBRS Certification Project

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.

Woodland is one of four incorporated cities in Yolo County and serves as the county seat, located in California's Central Valley, 20 miles northwest of Sacramento. Woodland Police Department (WPD) has 64 sworn police officers and 15 civilian staff and serves a population of 59,080.

WPD indicates a commitment to reporting NIBRS by the January 2021 deadline. WPD proposes working with their current RMS solution provider, TriTech, to implement a fully IBR capable reporting system in the agency. All federal funds requested in their proposal are for the solution provider. As part of this transition, TriTech will provide significant technical assistance during all phases of the upgrade. WPD completed a readiness assessment in March of 2018 and used that information to identify the tasks, performance measures and deliverables for the various phases of the project. The activities associated with the funding request will be completed within 24 months. The requested funds for TriTech will cover the software upgrade and staff training, expected to take approximately 14 months. The estimate from TriTech was provided in the application and includes a detailed breakdown of costs. WPD understands that certification to report NIBRS data, either through the state or directly to the FBI, is the penultimate deliverable for this award.

(CA/NCF)