Councillor Buchanan: Police spending too much time on data entry, national review needed

Are police officers across Canada spending too much of their time on data entry?

One Red Deer city councillor thinks they are and that a national review is necessary.

Buck Buchanan presented a notice of motion calling for such a review during Monday’s council meeting.

Should city council pass a resolution, their call for a review would be taken to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Buchanan says the current system is over-taxing on police and in some cases requires an officer to spend 70 per cent of their on-duty time doing data entry.

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“It’s not necessarily a bad system, but it takes a lot to feed it,” he says. “The systems don’t talk to each other [either]. In British Columbia, they’ve got a provincial one called Prime, and in Alberta, we use a system called PROS. It’s too labour-intensive for your people, so consequently they’re spending a great deal of their time doing data entry and then we take it as municipalities in the ear on visibility. People ask where are they, what are they doing, and say they’re not on the streets.”

A former cop himself, Buchanan recalls a recent conversation he had with a member who was on the force before he retired.

“I told him about bringing the resolution forward and he says ‘Thank you Buck, go over to the detachment now, walk into the bullpen and see the [number of] people that are sitting at the computers.’”

Buchanan says ultimately, it’s about making life better for the ‘guys and gals doing the job.’ For Buchanan, that includes negating the need for members to seek out shortcuts.

“What ultimately has happened is that guys and gals get creative as to how they don’t have to do things because it’s labour-intensive. So rather than do what needs to be done, we’ll get creative. Instead of saying an apple is an apple, we’ll say it’s an orange and we don’t have to do all the data entry on it,” he says.

Red Deer RCMP Superintendent Ken Foster takes exception to that notion and questions where Buchanan is getting his information.

“I’m not going to get drawn into an argument with Councillor Buchanan, but I work in the environment and we have a number of steps, checks and balances and approvals and supervisors that are checking this. I’ll leave that to others to figure out, but we have robust supervision that ensures what’s being put in is accurate,” he says. “Our humans are fallible, and will shortcuts be looked at? I’d be naive to say they aren’t, but I’ll leave it at that.”

Foster adds he doesn’t believe officers are spending as much time on data entry as Buchanan claims. However, he admits a lot of time is spent on administrative duties like fulfilling provincial requirements around attending court or filling out domestic violence forms or completing training.

Foster says the time spent doing data entry is integral to working efficiently and strategically to take down criminals.

“A perfect example is Project Pinpoint.  The value of the data in a record management system is of utmost and paramount importance to help us paint the picture so that we can target those doing the crimes and be in the areas where the crimes are happening. Anything that enhances efficiencies around data management, I don’t see that ever being bad.”

Buchanan’s notice of motion will come back to council at an upcoming meeting.