Alaska Deploys COPLINK® Technology Statewide To Fight Crime Creating Model for Law Enforcement Information Sharing Initiatives Nationwide

10/22/03
IACP Conference, Philadelphia, PA

Two of the biggest barriers to solving crimes – timely information sharing and qualified lead generation – will be virtually eliminated in Alaska through the formation of ALEISS, the Alaska Law Enforcement Information Sharing System. ALEISS is a newly formed consortium of Alaska law enforcement agencies that will utilize COPLINK® -- Knowledge Computing Corporation’s technologically advanced and proven crime fighting solution for collecting, consolidating and sharing information across jurisdictions to help solve crimes. The announcement was made today at the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference.

“Improving community safety for our citizens and providing law enforcement with tools that help keep more public safety officers on the streets to solve crime is a top priority in Alaska,” said Governor Frank Murkowski. “ALEISS is a powerful, responsible and cost effective model for how our nation can allocate resources to help protect our communities.”

Funding for the first phase of the initiative will be provided by a federal grant administered by the State of Alaska and the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center – Northwest (NLECTC-NW). NLECTC-NW is a program of the National Institute of Justice, a unit of the United States Department of Justice. Participating agencies include the Homer Police Department; Seward Police Department; Soldotna Police Department; Juneau Police Department; Anchorage Police Department; Kenai Police Department; Alaska Department of Public Safety; and the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center Northwest (NLECTC-NW) in Anchorage. Unique to this initiative, is an unprecedented effort by ALEISS member agencies to establish clear protocols for use of the system prior to entering into the agreement.

COPLINK provides unparalleled analysis and decision support for rapidly identifying criminal suspects, relationships and patterns that can help solve and prevent crime. The solution is also promising for use in prevention of domestic terrorism.

COPLINK works by allowing vast quantities of structured and seemingly unrelated data, currently housed in incompatible computer-based record management systems (RMS), to be organized under a single, highly secure intranet-based platform. One search using known facts from an ongoing criminal investigation can produce qualified leads in minutes – a process that prior to COPLINK, often took days or weeks. Through sophisticated analytics, COPLINK builds ‘institutional memory’, reduces knowledge gaps, and prevents criminals from falling through the cracks.

“COPLINK helps generate qualified leads when there are none and has helped put murderers, repeat sex offenders and drug traffickers behind bars in other jurisdictions around the country where it’s in use,” said Seward Police Chief Tom Clemons, President of the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police, an organization that was instrumental in forming the ALEISS consortium. “If a child is abducted from the playground, and the only information we have is a general description of the suspect and a partial vehicle description, our chances of catching the person and recovering the child before it becomes a tragedy just increased 100 fold.”

When COPLINK is used to create information sharing networks like ALEISS, each participating agency controls what data is shared, with whom and when. This safeguard helps protects sensitive information while allowing for the creation of ad hoc regional task forces to address specific criminal activity.

“ALEISS members spent several months working together to establish privacy, security and responsibility protocols that will govern the use and operation of the system prior to even entering into the contract,” said Bob Griffiths, Director of the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center – Northwest. “COPLINK’s ability to restrict access to data based on individual user security clearance levels, and the sensitivity of the data itself, coupled with ongoing audit functionality supports critical requirements established by the ALEISS Consortium.”

COPLINK will be used for law enforcement purposes only, utilizing public data from existing law enforcement databases such as arrest records and traffic citations. The first phase of the contract calls for migrating one RMS database from each participating police department. Three additional phases will be implemented as additional funding becomes available.

Only ALEISS consortium employees that have been subject to background screening will be allowed access to the COPLINK system. Background screenings will be fingerprint-based including checks of both the state and national criminal history repositories. If a felony conviction of any kind is found, access to COPLINK shall not be granted.

In addition, COPLINK creates a detailed audit trail for every search conducted. This serves two purposes. Officers seeking to question or obtain a warrant on suspects identified through COPLINK are able to clearly demonstrate with hard facts how that person fits the criminal profile and how others were excluded. The System Administrator is also able to monitor use for audit purposes to identify any abuse that would result in suspension of a user’s access privileges under the terms established by the ALEISS consortium.

Designed by former law enforcement officials, COPLINK is tactically sophisticated yet user-friendly. Even the most non-technical law enforcement officials can master it in less than a day. By the end of 2003, COPLINK will be deployed in nearly 30 distinct locations nationwide. The solution was most recently brought online in Northeast Kansas to support over 1000 police officers in fighting crime and improving community safety.

About Knowledge Computing Corporation
Knowledge Computing Corporation provides technology-based crime fighting solutions to leading edge law enforcement agencies nationwide. Its critically-acclaimed product, COPLINK®, in use since 1998, is based on knowledge management technology first prototyped by top-ranked researchers in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson through a grant by the National Institute of Justice. The technologies developed at Knowledge Computing Corporation have been tested and proven by law enforcement agencies around the country. For more information: www.knowledgecc.com or www.coplink.net.