Hagerstown Police Department NIBRS Transition

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 FY2019 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 Hagerstown Police Department (HPD) is one of five agencies sharing a records management system (RMS) hosted by the Washington County Sheriff’s Department (WCSD). HPD servers more than 40,000 residents and is staffed by about 125 sworn and civilian personnel that respond to more than 6,000 incident reports annually. The goal of this project is to submit incident-based crime data, to the Maryland Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, that is compliant with both the state’s reporting requirements and the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) standard. To accomplish this goal, HPD and WCSD will (1) obtain a NIBRS-compliant records management system (RMS), (2) obtain hardware, software, and licenses to support the RMS, (3) receive technical assistance to support incident-based reporting, and (4) train personnel in collecting and reporting incident-based data. HPD will work with the Maryland UCR Program to certify data meet the state’s incident-based reporting requirements and will submit NIBRS-complaint data as a final deliverable of this award.

CA/NCF