Cobb Police Unveil New System For Information Access

At its quarterly Police E-mail Notification System meeting on Tuesday night, Cobb County police of Precinct 2 unveiled a new system that will allow individuals to search for information about crime incidents and accidents and have them pinpointed on an interactive map.

New Online System Helps Residents Access Info Faster

The new system is called P2C, which stands for Police to Citizen, and it is currently in a draft mode while officers and other law enforcement personnel continue testing it.

Once the site is live for community use, users would be able to search for incidents or accidents on a specific street in Cobb County or in a specific ZIP code. They would also be able to see PDF versions of incident and accident reports that are public record.

Sensitive information, such as social security numbers, names of rape victims or names of minors, would not be made public through this system. Active investigations would also not be released.

Capt. S. L. Merrifield said, “The department will pretty much release what it can release.”

“It’s a work in progress,” said Merrifield. “The timeliness is amazing.”

It could take hours and sometimes days to go through the paperwork required to input the records into the current system and then put it on the PENS site, Merrifield explained.

“Now officers do it in their car and hit submit,” Merrifield said, explaining that the system is near real-time.

Precinct 2 is the busiest of all precincts in the county, Merrifield said, adding that last year, there were 60,000 calls for service from the precinct.

“Hopefully, we’ll keep those red dots down,” Merrifield said.

“We’re going to make eyes and ears out of every Cobb citizen,” said Lt. James Bullock.

Another new benefit for residents is the online incident report requests, which allow residents to request incident reports at any time and not have to come to a local precinct during the hours of operation to fill out a request.

Residential Burglaries Down in 2011, Officers Stress Recording Serial Numbers

Over the last quarter of 2010, residential burglaries in the area were up considerably, said Sgt. Jorge Mestre.

However, the department has seen a 36 percent decrease in 2011 in residential burglaries, Mestre said, due to “the excellent work of the men and women of Precinct 2.”

The officers stressed recording the serial numbers of all their major electronics if possible. This is one of the only ways that they would be able to claim their property if it were ever stolen and recovered, they explained.

In January, the officers of Precinct 2 recovered nearly 1,000 items of stolen property after stopping a burglary in progress.

However, very little of the property has been returned to its rightful owners because “we can’t tell if it’s theirs,” Bullock said.

The individuals who have been charged with stealing the items could have faced more charges if they had those serial numbers to confirm that the property was indeed stolen, Bullock explained.

Mestre said he keeps the serial numbers of his important items in a password storage program on his phone.

Bullock suggested registering electronics with the companies that make or sell the product as a way of maintaining the serial numbers. He also suggested calling about extended warranties on the items to find serial numbers.

Locals said this was the lowest attendance they have seen at a Precinct 2 Quarterly PENS meeting.

Shirley Popham, who has lived in the area since 1963, was one of the 12 people in attendance on Tuesday night.

“This is my community and I want to know,” Popham said. “It’s my home, so I want to know what’s happening.”