About
Incident Number Assignments
The
Mount Holyoke College Department of Public Safety utilizes an automated
computer aided dispatch (CAD) and records system.
Whenever
an officer is sent on a call, or when she or he initiates a call,
the call is logged in the dispatch system by our dispatchers, or
by the officers via laptops.
When
a call involves a crime, an injury on campus, a motor vehicle accident,
or an arrest, etc., a report must be written, and the dispatcher
assigns an incident, arrest or accident number. Occasionally, the
wrong button is hit, or a case may initially appear as something
different than is ultimately determined.
Officers
also have a secondary way to track information for future reference
that does not meet the level of requiring a report such as those
above that are listed in this log, a "field interview."
Occasionally, something may appear initially as needing an incident
report, but it actually is only information that needs to be tracked
by a field interview. For example, For example, a student reports
that her wallet was stolen from her room, but before the report
is even completed by the officer, she finds it in her book bag.
Our
system does not allow us to re-assign the numbers on the cases as
they are tied directly to the original call time, location, etc.,
so we must then not use that number.
We
are noting this in the log for your information. So if you see "incident
number not assigned in the log," you will know that the number
is not omitted from the log, but is not assigned.
Another
note about our log is that we list all incidents in date and time
order, with the most recent at the top. This makes sense because
members of our community consulting the log would most likely want
to see incidents this way. However, occasionally an incident may
be reported to a dispatcher on one date, but the involved party
may not come down until another date to complete a report, or an
incident may be initially tracked as important information in a
field interview, and when more details are known, it becomes a criminal
incident that must be documented in that system. We are therefore
now cross-referencing cases so members of our community can be sure
that they have not missed any cases.
We
do not include off-campus incidents, even when involving members
of our community on our logs as these are the responsibility of
the assigned police department. We may, however, issue alerts based
on such incidents if we feel that an incident or string of incidents
may be of concern to members of our community.
We
always strive to present information clearly, completely and accurately;
please feel free to contact jtripp@mtholyoke.edu
if you see errors on our logs.
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