The Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS) is making it easier to report minor crimes by going on-line.
Residents of the Waterloo Region will be able to report crimes such as property damage, theft from vehicles, theft under $5,000 and loss of property by visiting the police website at www.wrps.on.ca starting on October 29.
“We are living in more of an on-line community now than we ever have, people are more accustomed to using the internet and websites as a means to communicating and we want to be part of that process to provide a service to the community,” said Olaf Heinzel, Public Affairs Coordinator with the WRPS.
Residents will have an opportunity to report information by following a series of steps that the on-line form will take them through.
“It is the equivalent of doing an on-line form as oppose to calling a person and then giving the information over the phone,” said Heinzel.
It is expected that some 200 on-line reports will be made a month. The reports will be reviewed by a police officer making sure they are accurate and if any follow up needs to happen, the WRPS on-line report states. Each report will be given an occurrence number to track the incident.
“We see it as a way of creating additional efficiencies within our service as we try and find efficient ways to get information from the community and also at the same time make it more convenient for members of the community,” said Heinzel.
The service will be assessed every three months to measure its popularity and likelihood for expanding it to include other crimes, the report said. It is expected that the program will be used by residents between the ages of 19 and 45 as they are already using forms of social media to contact police.
The success of the campaign will be measured by evaluating the quantity of on-line reports, hits to the on-line reporting section of the WRPS website, quantity of tweets and retweets through Twitter and the general public knowledge of the on-line reporting option.
The choice of the on-line program will be offered to people when they call police for assistance or to report crimes.
