Police Beat: Crime line open

A centralised, non-emergency reporting channel that will free up frontline staff, making Waikato police more accessible, professional and victim focused is how the officer managing it's implementation describes the Crime Reporting Line (CRL).

District Case Manager, Senior Sergeant Tim Anderson, said this week's introduction of CRL in the Waikato is a continuation of the Waikato Tomorrow strategy introduced last year and an enhancement on the recent centralisation of telephony.

"What this means is that when the public ring police their call will be triaged within our district and either put through to the person they need to speak to or, if it is a non-emergency matter, put through to the CRL call taker in Auckland for the complaint to be formally recorded.

"Once the complaint has been recorded the electronic case is reviewed by the File (Complaint) Management Centre in Hamilton where an assessment is made as to whether there are further avenues of inquiry or the case is closed."

Mr Anderson said the 24/7 CRL service is not new technology, it has been well tested and streamlined in trials in a number of other police districts including Eastern, Canterbury, Auckland, Counties Manukau and the Bay of Plenty. "A number of benefits from CRL have been identified. On average the processing time of a complaint has been reduced to 12 minutes from receipt of call to an electronic case being created.

"In addition, the creation of a case automatically generates a complaint acknowledgement form (required by insurance companies) and this form and crime prevention advice is emailed or posted out to the victim.

"This alleviates the need for victims to queue up at police stations while freeing up our staff to spend more time being visible out on the streets."