Abstract

Many police departments lack technological resources that enables them to track meaningful data. Beginning in 2020, the State of Ohio has mandated that all departments track and collect police incident data. This data is where most police officers' public contact comes from according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Office of Justice Programs). Currently, this data is gathered from notes that the officer makes at the time of the incident and later recorded in an excel document. This process is inefficient and fallible. Patrol is a cross-platform web application that allows officers to easily, accurately and efficiently gather incident data. By creating an application that is cloud-based, officers can easily input information that stores the data at the time of the incident. This data is used to generate reports for the department and state auditors. Patrol's design and development allows officers to save time and difficulty in creating incident reports.