The Austin Police Department is turning to technology to improve officer response times. In about one month the department will roll out an online reporting system for low priority calls, freeing up officers for more urgent ones.
Getting an officer to come out for a low priority call such as theft may take hours, but in August the reporting process with APD will be as fast as you can type.
"You can make the report at your leisure and you can document what took place," said APD Commander Troy Gay.
Commander Gay is talking about Coplogic. It is used by dozens of police departments nationwide, including the Travis County Sheriff's Office.
It guides victims step-by-step through a police report. It is designed for victims of minor crimes like theft, vandalism, and lost property.
Gay says those lower priority crimes account for 80,000 calls a year. He says of that, 90 percent have zero evidence that an officer would need to come out and collect.
"So we're actually utilizing our officers more on emergency response and not so much for handling calls that could be done over the Internet," Gay said.
Since the launch of Coplogic in November through May of this year, the sheriff's office has received 805 online reports. The top two were theft and credit card abuse. Twelve percent of reports were rejected for occurring outside of county's jurisdiction. No reports were false.
The sheriff's office estimates the program saved 1,200 man hours, or $32,000.
If you do not own a computer, you will be able to call 311 and an operator will enter the data for you. The system will be paid for with seized assets from criminals. It launches in late August.
