COPLINK System Helps Fight Crime, Terrorism

• By Brent Dirks
• Oct 24, 2007

In a world of constant and ever-flowing data, the job for law enforcement personnel is made that much harder. That’s why Los Angeles County law enforcement officials are turning to the COPLINK system from Knowledge Computing Corp. to help fight crime and terrorism.

Linking with the Regional Terrorism Information and Integration System (RTIIS) consortium, COPLINK provides analysis and decision support for rapidly identifying criminal suspects, relationships and patterns. The system will use 45 public data sources from an assortment of disparate records management systems used by law enforcement agencies across the county.

"This initiative will speed the discovery process in criminal and terrorism investigations by discovering relationships and associations between criminal activity and suspects that would otherwise be difficult to detect," said Commander John Radeleff of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "This will help law enforcement agencies across Los Angeles County get violent and repeat offenders off the street faster. In addition, the RTIIS initiative will increase our ability to share information with other neighboring agencies to catch criminals who operate across multiple jurisdictions."

Using a Global Justice XML Data Model, the data reference model for the exchange of information within the justice and public safety communities, the system works by allowing cast quantities of structured and seemingly unrelated data – including data currently housed in various incompatible databases and records management systems – to be securely organized, consolidated and rapidly analyzed over a secure, intranet-based platform.

With COPLINK, a search using known or partial facts can produce leads in seconds, something that could take days or week before. Through sophisticated analytics, including powerful visualization tools, COPLINK builds institutional memory, reduces knowledge gaps and prevents criminals from going undetected.

And to alleviate privacy concerns, access to the data is based on strict policy protocols and produces a detailed audit trail for every search. The audit trail allows law enforcement personnel who want 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.

Along with Los Angeles County law enforcement, COPLINK is used by the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the Orange County Integrated Law and Justice (OCILJ) consortium of county police agencies, as well as across San Diego through the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS) Network, which supports federal, state and local law enforcement agencies across San Diego. All of the information provided by each user will be linked in the system.

When COPLINK is used to create regional or statewide networks, each participating agency has real-time control over what data is shared, with whom and when. In addition, data continues to reside and be updated at its existing source, with automatic refresh mechanisms triggering updates within COPLINK. These safeguards help protect the integrity of data and sensitive information while allowing for the creation of ad hoc regional task forces to address specific criminal activity.

In use in more than 600 jurisdictions nationwide spanning across 20 states, the system has proven its worth. According to Knowledge Computing, the system provides a 14:1 investigative time advantage to help reduce the time it takes to identify suspects, allowing more time for law enforcement on the streets instead of sifting through information.