Records and Data |
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| The Records and Data Unit manages Guelph Police Service information relating to the work of our officers. This unit is part of the Corporate Services division of the Guelph Police Service, and is composed of 21 staff. As well, this unit hires high school co-operative education and summer students, helping to further the educational and work experiences of youth. |
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| Essentially, the Records and Data Unit receives all the information produced by our officers from incidents they are involved in and process, index and file that information for use by various agencies, including government agencies such as courts and the Ministry of Transportation, and external agencies such as Probation and Parole. The unit is also a support service for our officers, including providing information to our officers when required. |
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| Information comes to the unit in the form of written accident reports and tickets, as well as through reports dictated by officers. Transcriptionists, one for each of our five platoons, take those dictated reports and type them into our records management system. The information from paper reports is entered into that system as well. Any time that Records and Data staff provides any of this information to an individual or agency, the staff must ensure compliance with legislation such as the Youth Criminal Justice Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
This unit also works with the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) database maintained by the RCMP. CPIC is a national database that tracks all charged and wanted persons, persons bound by court orders, lost and stolen property, and other pieces of information relating to law enforcement. Our CPIC operators maintain Guelph Police Service information in this database, and query the database for our officers who need information contained in the CPIC. As with transcriptionists, each platoon has a CPIC Operator. The Records and Data Unit also provides a number of services for the general public. For instance, they administer the police clearance process (also called a police records check) for residents of Guelph who need it for volunteer positions or for employment purposes. Over 8,000 checks were processed in 2006. This unit also oversees the Guelph Police Service's false alarm policy and alarm registration for residents and businesses within the City of Guelph. Alarm registration provides a police response to an alarm; one reason the alarm registration program was put in place is to decrease the number of false alarms in the city, reducing the time officers spend responding to false alarms. |
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