Police blotters replaced by new crime-data system

Faithful readers of InMaricopa.com’s police reports undoubtedly have noticed a change in the last couple weeks in the format of reports from the Maricopa Police Department.

InMaricopa.com also publishes reports from the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, but those reports have not changed.

MPD recently has subscribed to a new computer statistics system called CrimeReports.com which the department said will provide data for analysis in real time.

This data system will enable the department to better predict when and where certain incidents, such as burglaries and vehicle collisions are likely to occur, said Officer Ricardo Alvarado, MPD public information officer.

Switching over to the new system, however, has meant the department no longer is providing InMaricopa a daily “police blotter” that not only listed actual incidents that involved police, but all the calls made to dispatch.

Often, when police checked out those calls, they turned out to be “false alarms” such as a mother reporting her child was missing when actually she forgot the child was staying after school for an event, police said.

Names and specific addresses were not published in the blotters and information about sex crimes was redacted.

InMaricopa is now generating a daily crime list from the CrimeReports.com system and it does not include the dispatch calls that did not result in actual incidents.

Alvarado said the blotters took two or three hours a day to prepare, and now that employee’s time is being used for crime analysis.