POLREC - POLICE RECORDS AND COMMUNICATIONS BACKGROUND The...

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POLICE RECORDS AND COMMUNICATIONS
BACKGROUND:
The Police Department has approximately 800 employees of which
about 600 are sworn officers. The rest are non-sworn clerical
and administrative support personnel. The department is
organized according to standard operating police functions and
responsibilities. This audit is concerned with the internal
control over police records and communications.
The Records and Communications divisions are placed
administratively under the Colonel of Operations. Each division
is headed by a police officer with the rank of captain. A non-
sworn administrative supervisor is in direct charge of daily
operations. Both divisions operate 24 hours per day with three
work shifts.
The records system used by the department is manual and therefore
labor intensive. The heart of the system is the rotary file. It
is used as a cross reference to the police files and also for
a quick check on individuals' past histories. Maintenance on the
system is continuous. The major risk in this system rests with
the rotary file: if a record is misclassified in the file, the
associated file cannot be located.
Police communications is automated and incoming and outgoing
calls are logged or tracked by the computer. Incoming calls are
classified according to a predetermined priority or
classification hierarchy. The codes used are as follows:
Code 1 = Life threatening situation
Code 2 = Emergency non-life threatening
Code 3 = Other