PolicePro 9 will be the first version to support IBR - Incident Based Reporting. The Feds and various states have been pushing this since the early 80s as an "improvement" over UCR - Uniform Crime Reporting - which dates back to the 60s.

There are actually two parts to this story. The first, which applied almost instantly to UCR, was the perversion of the original intent of the whole thing in the first place. Uniform Crime Reporting - note the word "Uniform" - was supposed to be a nationally scoped levelling of the playing field, so to speak. Standardized reporting across the country would allow intelligent analysis of crimes, incidents and trends, right?

Wrong! The first thing that happened is that almost every state - with my own home state, New York, in the lead - immediately began perverting and diluting the value of the whole thing by adding what are known as "enhancements" to UCR reporting. "Enhancement" in this case means taking something that is logical, orderly and valuable and turning it into a meaningless morass of asinine statistics that no longer mean anything.

So Robbery in the UCR world - depending on what state you're in - became lists miles long, in some places boiling down to Robbery/Force, others Robbery/Force/Hands/Fists/Teeth, and elsewhere Robbery/Force/Intentional. All through the UCR Part One crimes - the important ones, Murder, Rape, Robbery, Arson, Assault and Kidnapping - various state Divisions of Criminal Justice couldn't wait to put their own wrinkle on it.

The result? Supporting UCR in several states is a nightmare, since every damn state is different. So much for Uniform.


So let's go ahead and modernize! Let's dive in to the Next Big Thing, Incident Based Reporting! After all, people have been asking for it for years, and on the surface at least it seems to make more sense than UCR.

Guess what? Does New York State report IBR? Why the hell would they want to do that when you can have NYBIR: the Enhanced version for, you guessed it, New York!

MORE work for less value and there's Your Tax Dollars At Work.


So just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, I'm going through the Victim tables this afternoon, dutifully writing new data tables to comply and support this wonderful standard, and I come to a table called Victim Residence Status.

Can you feel this one coming? Can anyone say "Illegal Alien"? Of course not, that would be rude.

OK, how about "Undocumented Alien?" Why no, that's not here either.

Take a look. In the year 2007, when we are under threat of assault from potential intruders who don't belong here, THERE IS NO REPORTING CATEGORY FOR ANYONE WHO IS NOT HERE LEGALLY. The best you can hope for is "Other Status".

This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. It really raises your confidence that we might ever prevail against any of our enemies if we can't even risk naming those who AREN'T our enemies, but just might not belong here legally. I have no problem with people trying to improve their families' lives by coming here for America's opportunities - if I'd been born in the wrong part of South America I hope I'd have the guts to come here too, but if something is blue, there's nothing to be gained by calling it gray. This is supposed to be policing, right? Close enough doesn't count.