Law enforcement agencies from across North Mississippi joined Columbus Police Department on Tuesday for a report-writing workshop aimed at helping departments comply with the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System.
CPD welcomed officers and deputies from six other agencies for a daylong training focused on writing more accurate, detailed crime reports that meet NIBRS standards.
NIBRS replaced the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting system in 2021 as the standard for collecting crime data across the country, requiring agencies like CPD to change their standards as well.
“So we’re trying to get our agency, along with other agencies, NIBRS compliant,” Daughtry told The Dispatch during the workshop. “… The state has offered to come out, and we are really happy to host this training.”
Unlike the Summary Reporting System formerly used, which is an aggregate monthly tally of crimes, NIBRS requires agencies to collect and submit much more detailed incident-specific data, with the goal of improving the overall crime data collected by law enforcement.
When used to its full potential, NIBRS identifies when and where crime takes place, what form it takes and the characteristics of its victims and perpetrators, according to the FBI.
The idea is with more detailed data, agencies can better determine the methods and resources needed to fight crime within specific communities.
For the workshop on Friday, Kamyra Thomas, a trainer with the Department of Public Safety, walked officers through the steps of writing a detailed report that clearly records the data necessary to meet NIBRS standards. Those in attendance received credit toward their department’s certification.
Daughtry said CPD is in the final stages of certification, which he expects the department to meet before the deadline at the end of this year. That milestone will reflect months of collecting and submitting detailed data reports before reviewing them to ensure they meet federal standards.
“One of the processes is the fact that you have to go through over six months of turning in data back and forth, and when they read your reports, they send it back,” he said. “We’ve got to redo it and correct the little mistakes.”
Additionally, to become NIBRS compliant agencies have to demonstrate their reporting systems meet technical specifications laid out by the FBI, collect consistent and accurate data and do so with a low error rate. Certified agencies have to maintain an error rate of 4% or less to stay in compliance.
With only 205 agencies in Mississippi that are NIBRS compliant out of more than 500 located in the state, Daughtry said hosting these trainings is a step in the “right direction.”
Though it was focused on NIBRS compliance, the workshop on Friday gave law enforcement officers a chance to generally brush up on their reporting skills.
Interim Noxubee County Sheriff Dantavius Smith said his office is already NIBRS certified, but he still sent six deputies to Columbus for the workshop.
As a county that historically only sends deputies to the police academy without further training, he said it was important to him to ensure the deputies are “trained” and “proficient enough to do the job.”
“The biggest of what I hope they took away is how to properly write a report, how to annotate details, to detail every single thing that happens on a call because even the smallest things in reports can be the most crucial or the most significant thing,” Smith told The Dispatch.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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