“Police departments in general create a lot of paperwork and kill a lot of trees,” says Jeffrey Beahen, Chief of Police for Elk River, MN.

But Beahen’s department is saving trees and racking up awards—including one for Excellence in Innovation in Information Technology from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) just this year.

“Our peers are John Hopkins University, the San Diego Police Department, the Canadian Research Center and the Dutch National Police,” Beahen notes proudly. “And little old Elk River is up on the porch with the big dogs.”

Elk Rapids, home to 24,000 and located on the outskirts of greater Minneapolis, got up on that porch thanks to Beahen’s vision of giving his officers every technological advantage available—with Laserfiche playing a vital role in both that vision and that advantage.

When Beahen came to Elk River as assistant chief in 1998, the department was still using typewriters and carbon paper. “There were these two PC’s with a word processing program for transcription purposes,” he remembers. “We used a main frame computer that operated in DOS for our existing records system, which was purchased in 1984.”

Beahen immediately began upgrading the department’s technology, working after hours to install computers and build a network to get everyone on e-mail. Next up was finding an information storage system to use on the new network. “Everybody knew we needed it. It was more like who wanted to be the first one to get it out there,” he says. Beahen got it out there, and sixteen months later, Elk River was using Laserfiche.

Beahen immediately saw Laserfiche’s potential. “We wanted to get to the point where everything for a case file could be scanned in and filed by case number and the whole thing could be sent out as an attachment,” he says. “We just wanted to make it that simple.”

But before that could happen, two things had to be contended with: old paper files and an outdated database.

“We open between 24,000 and 25,000 files a year—and that takes up a whole storage room,” Beahen explains. “A file for something like a DUI might have 30 or 40 documents, and things get lost. Arson and burglary files, when you consider all the statements and photos, can easily be eight or nine hundred pages. If you’re working a homicide case, you might be adding reports every day.”

For officers who had to testify at court, that meant printing out and distributing seven or more copies of the file to judges, attorneys and detectives, which resulted in both a lot of paper and a lot of transportation costs.

“The county attorney’s eight miles away, the city attorney’s 12 miles away, nobody’s right there in the same building,” Beahen says. “Now, we’re slowly but surely scanning previous years’ case records. When we first started, we had to find case records. Now, once we’ve get them, we scan them. The whole transaction takes less than half a day,” Beahen says proudly. “We’ve been completely paperless since April of 2007.”

Then there was the challenge of maximizing Laserfiche’s potential by replacing Elk River’s outmoded database.

“Our old system was proprietary, so we could only use Laserfiche for storage,” Beahen says. “One of our goals was to find a new records system that would allow us to accept data from the Laserfiche-scanned documents that could be attached directly to the record as media.”

Being able to scan and attach is actually what attracted him to Laserfiche in the first place.

“That’s one of the big reasons why we selected it. With Laserfiche, you just scan all the odds and ends in the same file. We used to have to create all these PDFs and then attach them. Now, Laserfiche interacts directly with our existing records system and scans everything—4×8s, half-sheets, full-sheets—into the same case number,” he says.

But not everyone made the paperless switch as enthusiastically.

“Sometimes the judges and courts just need that paper in front of them, because they’re used to that. But we’ve met with them and they’re now convinced that this is the future. They’ve directed everyone in their offices to work toward a paperless system for everything,” Beahen says. “The tickets we write are already being sent in electronically. Now they’re looking at e-filing complaints and all court orders.

“What wins them over is I can be on the phone with them and tell them ‘I’m going to send it electronically.’ And then, while I’m on the phone, I’ll say ‘Open your e-mail and hit print.’ The speed and efficiency wins over all the doubters.”

What’s won Beahen over is the sheer range of benefits from using a paperless system.

“Last year we saved over $17,000 just in paper costs,” he begins. “Plus, it’s green. There are more energy and resources savings than people might think. Out of my yearly budget that doesn’t seem that significant, but with budget cuts and the actual man hours you’re saving, it adds up.”

Then there’s the technical edge his officers enjoy.

“We’re talking real-time investigative tools at the officer’s fingertips,” Beahen offers. “We’re not a very high-crime area, but we do see our share of property crimes. Like breaking into construction sites and stealing copper. Now we can have an officer on the scene who’s found a guy with cutting tools in his trunk. And we may have a case a month earlier where we have a picture of the shoes used in that crime. The officer can immediately view the picture of the shoes and see if it matches,” Beahen explains. “In the old days, someone had to drive all the way back and look up the file—that is, if they had access to it.

“When you think of giving every officer every piece of information in the car instantly, that’s huge. If we have it, they have it.”

Elk River’s high-tech transition has been almost total: in addition to using Quick Fields and Web Link, the ERPD uses Crimereports.com to provide a link to its service calls and interfaces using an electronic roll-call page.

Still, some old habits die hard. “We were so used to having to put staples through everything,” Beahen jokes. “The biggest headache of using our Laserfiche system is taking everything we had stapled together apart so we could scan it in.”

Not that his successors will have to do that. They might not even need to know what a stapler is.

“We have a new generation of officers that can text with one hand while they talk on the cell and still use the radio,” he observes. “We were moving some old equipment this younger guy saw one of the old typewriters from when I first got here in 1998, and he was asking, ‘What’s this?’”

Tags: law enforcement, Local Government, police, State and Local Government

Posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 8:00 am under Customer Stories, Law Enforcement, Municipal Government, State and Local Government. You can comment on this post.