Police service boosts capacity of officers, support staff with Crown eBrief Submission Project.

Chatham-Kent Police ServiceCase Study

Chatham-Kent Police Service Case Study 2

Background With reduced funding and a need to put more officers on the street, the Chatham-Kent Police Service (CKPS) was looking for ways to improve efficiencies across the organization to save money and time — and ultimately make better use of taxpayers’ dollars.

The Challenge“We realized we needed to make exponential efficiency gains in the next decade in order to meet the challenges we’re facing,” said Chief of Police Dennis Poole. “The economic climate doesn’t lend itself to increasing public service budgets. We realized our systems management processes were keeping officers off the streets and stuck at their desks doing paperwork.”

This included a time-consuming process for submitting Crown Briefs, which are sent to the Crown Attorney for criminal prosecutions. The process, which involved officers collecting evidence and dictating statements, included more than 100 steps, 61 per cent of which were manual.

Data entry personnel would then type those statements word for word into a records management system — a process that, due to backlogs and prioritization, could take one to two weeks for routine cases. CKPS has five members in its data entry unit who deal with about 24,000 reports and Crown Briefs per year, not including other documents such as witness statements.

A hard copy of each Crown Brief was printed out, put in a bin and ultimately driven to court; officers were essentially acting as couriers, and there was no security or backup if documents were compromised or lost.

The Solution “In order to operate effectively we had to change the way in which we produced Crown Briefs,” said Inspector Tim Mifflin. “We were looking to remove inefficient steps, save on personnel hours in handling the briefs, and work toward early resolution in Court.”

CKPS chose Xerox as a corporate partner to help transform its business processes based on their Lean Six Sigma process methodology. The methodology focuses on working together in establishing what counts, measuring what matters and then delivering sustainable results. From this, Xerox developed the Crown eBrief Submission Project, which would create an electronic version of the Crown brief and eliminate many of the manual steps involved.

The new process allows officers to dictate their notes directly into their smartphone; voice dictation software then transcribes their notes for data entry personnel to copy and paste into the records management system, significantly reducing the time and effort required to complete a Crown brief.

Chatham-Kent Police Service Case Study

In previous public surveys, CKPS found that citizens want to see more officers in their neighbourhoods. CKPS has eliminated a huge administrative burden for officers, increasing their time on the streets without having to hire more staff.

“Our officers can get their administrative work done more quickly, which allows them to spend more time in our neighbourhoods, whether walking a beat or taking on more calls. Ultimately, this will allow them to be more proactive with their time and our increased efficiency will make us more effective in our service to our community, and ultimately more accountable to the taxpayer.”

Dennis PooleThe Chief of Police at Chatham-Kent Police Service

Chatham-Kent Police Service Case Study 3

The ResultsRoutine Crown Briefs range from 500 to 2,400 words, depending on the incident. The voice recognition dictation software types 120 words per minute, while a stenographer averages around 60 words per minute, resulting in a 100% gain in productivity. For officers doing their own briefs that productivity gain would be over 500%.

Constable Bryan Parker, who has been with the CKPS since 2005 and was one of eight officers who participated in the new software pilot project, has experienced a number of benefits, including increased accountability. “That’s a major issue when you’re dealing with paper; there’s no way of tracking a brief if it’s lost,” he said. “In our old system, we put it in a bin and assumed it got to where it was supposed to go. Now I can track it from my smartphone.” With the brief being moved electronically it can be immediately traced, and all steps in the process are electronically tasked and recorded.

Another key benefit is that officers can access their documentation after it’s been submitted for data entry. “Before, I’d never see the brief again unless I asked someone in Records to pull up the file for me during business hours. Now I can access my briefs electronically at any time, and they’re easily searchable through a search engine,” said Parker.

Instead of sitting on the system for one or two weeks, the reports are in the records management system the same day they’re filed. “That’s a huge efficiency gain, and it allows us to make sure the Crown Brief is accurate before being called to the stand,” said Parker. “I’m not hunting for documents or coming in on my day off to do paperwork. It’s the way of the future — it’s going to save time and stress, and make people accountable.”

The new process eliminates 20 steps and converts 64 steps from manual to electronic. While the solution is still being rolled out, CKPS expects to see a 10% capacity increase of officers on the streets and up to a 20% increase in records staff productivity. As well, the process is 100% secure, with an audit trail, which didn’t previously exist.

It has also reduced a backlog of cases, which were taking six to eight weeks to get to first court date. CKPS would have needed to hire five new data entry staff to clear out this backlog and keep up the current pace of production, but after implementing the new process they did not have to hire any additional staff. Not only did they clear the backlog, but they have also cut the time to first court date in half.

CKPS spends roughly $200,000 a year to send officers to testify in Court, usually on their day off, while only 7% of those officers are actually required to testify. “If we are successful in realizing a 40% savings with this process, in my mind that’s significant savings. We’re also going to save about 4,000 personnel hours a year for support staff,” said Mifflin.

Chatham-Kent Police Service Case Study

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