BALTIMORE — Baltimore Police on Wednesday officially announced a transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System.
That means changes are coming as to how the department will collect and report on future crime data.
The FBI had called on all law enforcement agencies across the country to make the move.
According to officials, this new reporting system "provides greater specificity in reporting offenses, allows for the collection of more detailed crime-related information, helps give context to specific crime issues and affords greater analytic flexibility of the crime-data collected."
Data was previously collected under the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s Summary Reporting System, which started getting phased out last year.
In that system, only the most serious offense tied to any particular incident would be recorded, despite other incidents that are often times connected.
With the new system that will no longer be the case, as multiple offenses can be documented per incident.
Baltimore Police say moving to the new system will help identify crime patterns in a timely manner, and respond more effectively.
Because of the way information will now be documented, police say certain crime numbers may seem higher than in the past, but that does not mean the crime rate increased.
“NIBRS will benefit the Baltimore Police Department, city partners and residents by increasing the quantity, quality and timeliness of crime data,” said Commissioner Michael Harrison. “NIBRS will help give our department better context to specific crime issues and affords greater analytic flexibility of the crime data collected to ultimately reduce crime more effectively.”
