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Hickory Hills, IL The Hickory Hills Police Department is a small agency in IL. consisting of approximately 30 sworn officers and an additional 15 full and part-time support staff. Although we are a small agency we make every effort to remain progressive and stay as current with technology as our budget will allow. In 2003, with the move to a new police facility on the horizon, the Hickory Hills Police Department began researching a software program that would computerize our reporting system. After several failed attempts to format our current report into a workable option I was introduced to the CrimeSoft program by another local agency that had recently purchased the software. We obtained a 90-day demo disk from CrimeSoft but only had to evaluate the program for about two weeks before being sold on the fact that it was the best solution to our reporting problems. CrimeSoft has been running in our agency for about a year now and we are still discovering new uses for the system. Tech support provided by CrimeSoft allowed us to quickly overcome initial start-up issues and every officer in the agency now utilizes it. Each officer has identified features of the software that they find most useful. Our traffic officer uses it to maintain a database for traffic citations. The investigations division utilizes the supplement portal feature to maintain and organize entire cases. The search features allow officers instant access to the data put into the system, which has prompted a crime analysis of sorts, not to mention allowing every workstation 24hr. access to all generated crime reports. One of our biggest problems in the past was the unprofessional appearance of the handwritten field report, which has also been overcome by the CrimeSoft software. Officers have expanded their computer skills and field reports can now be completed from the onboard car terminals and uploaded into the database at a later time. CrimeSoft has revolutionized the way this agency completes its reporting requirements. Sgt. Dan Skoczylas
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