Remark-able Story: Remark Office OMR Helps Police Department Meet State Requirements
Submitted by:
Captain Mike Townsend, Commander
Bureau of Support Services
St. Peters Police Department
St. Peters, MO
A Bill that recently passed in Missouri says that all police departments have to collect data each time an officer makes a traffic stop. All this info has to be turned in to the State Attorney General twice a month. Just how the Law was to be met was left up to each department. Like the others, the St. Peters Chief of Police, Ronald S. Neubauer, had to implement the legislation. What made it hard was that no funding had been provided for hiring new personnel or for buying equipment. Optical mark recognition (OMR) provided the answer.
Townsend discarded handwritten notes as too labor intensive, and hand-held computers as too expensive. After he downloaded Remark Office OMR from the web, he concluded that it was the best solution for both content and ease of use. He created a prototype using Remark’s sample forms and bubble fonts. Based on this, the City Council approved the purchase of the Remark Office OMR Version 5 software and a Fujitsu ScanPartner 620C scanner. The final Traffic Stop Data Card matches the size of ticket books police normally carry. During each traffic stop, the officer fills in the appropriate bubble mark with either pen or pencil. "Surprisingly," says Townsend, "the Remark software recognizes a check within a mark as being equivalent to a filled-in one." At the end of their shift the cards are turned in and later scanned in batches.
The results are tallied in two formats. Remark’s "Easy Survey" overview is used to provide data for the Attorney General. "Survey Statistics" is a detailed analysis, including charts and graphs, and is used to keep the Department responsive to community needs.
