Cops learn to use e-blotter

MANILA, Philippines—With e-blotter, it’s going to be a “small world for criminals.”

The Philippine National Police Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (PNP-DIDM) trained 38 statisticians and investigators from the four stations of the Northern Police District (NPD) on Tuesday, on how to use the Crime Incident Reporting System (CIRS) or e-blotter.

Chief Inspector Melchor Agusin, chief of the DIDM’s Information Technology (IT) Division said the e-blotter system would make the transmission of crime reports from police stations to headquarters faster, easier and paperless. The crime database is accessible to other police stations and headquarters nationwide.

“We will make a small world for criminals with this technology,” Agusin told the Philippine Daily Inquirer after the seminar at the NPD headquarters.

The database would make it easier for police to know if the suspects had previous cases in other stations in the country and accost them based on previous warrant of arrests, he explained.

Jun Valoria, the planning officer and system administrator of the DIDM-IT, demonstrated that by typing the name of the suspect, the e-blotter system would show all the crime reports that contained his or her name.

The system has also made it easier for victims to follow up on their complaints.

“For example, if you reported a robbery incident in Cebu and you are from Camanava, you can ask the NPD if the stolen items have been recovered and the suspects have been arrested,” Valoria added.

The complainants would be given an “incident record transaction receipt” by the police station’s desk officer and they could show the receipt to any police station in the Philippines to get updates, he said.

When victims or witnesses report a crime at a police station, they would be asked to fill up an “incident record form” with the assistance of the desk officer. The form would be given to the crime registrar to encode the crime in the e-blotter, Valoria said.

Police stations would have crime registrars whose main responsibility would be to encode crime information into the e-blotter system, he said. “We really encourage the police to religiously encode crime information for the success of the program.”

Valoria also showed that police stations could generate statistics using the e-blotter system in seconds.

“If you want to find out the village with the most number of crime incidents, you can just click ‘crime incidents per barangay’ and a table of statistics will appear,” he said.

DIDM-IT chief Agusin said the statistics would help the police determine where they should concentrate or increase police visibility to lessen crime incidents.

Inspector Jose Romero Hizon, chief of the investigation unit of the NPD’s investigation and detective management unit, said they had the monthly unit crime period evaluation report (UCPER) but with the e-blotter, it would be easier for them to produce statistics on different crimes such as car theft, robbery and illegal drugs, among others.

After the seminar, the Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela police stations would be using the e-blotter system, Hizon said.

“This would help us respond to crimes faster and better,” he added.

Agusin said the launching of the e-blotter system started in 2011 and they would be conducting seminars in different police districts nationwide for reorientation and full implementation.

The DIDM is scheduled to conduct an e-blotter seminar on Wednesday (Nov. 7) in the Eastern Police District, in Quezon City Police District on Thursday, in Manila Police District on Friday and in Southern Police District on Tuesday (Nov. 13).

The division is also working on the launching of the “e-warrant” program of the PNP, which would store all arrest warrants in a database and the “e-rogue” gallery, which would show pictures of wanted criminals nationwide.