Kansas City Law Enforcement Agencies Deploy COPLINK System
As a part of the Kansas City Urban Area Security Initiative officials announced recently that they will use COPLINK(R) as a core component of their Emerging Threat Analysis Capability (ETAC) operations. ETAC will enable crime and threat analysis in a cross jurisdictional manner throughout the Kansas City Metro Area and will tie in with MoDex, a statewide Missouri COPLINK initiative.
"We are excited to be working with the progressive public safety leaders from the Kansas City Metro Area to enhance the ETAC law enforcement mission," said Knowledge Computing Corporation CEO, Robert Griffin. "COPLINK offers local, state and federal law enforcement officers the ability to easily and effectively share information and provide tactical lead generation across jurisdictional lines to accelerate the mission of fighting crime and thwarting terrorism. Kansas City's forward thinking public safety leaders are setting an example of the importance of both regional and interstate information sharing initiatives."
Area leaders throughout this bi-state community recognized the need to enhance the effectiveness of local law enforcement agencies through the sharing of information.
Chief John Douglass of the Overland Park Police Department and Chief James Corwin of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department are chairs of the committee that formed this consortium. Chief Corwin said this inter-agency cooperation is necessary to fight mobile law- breakers.
"Criminals don't know state lines," he said. "If you squeeze them in one place, they'll go to another. ETAC will help us know where they are and what they are doing throughout the metro area, and it will give us the tools we need to stop them."
The metro area straddles the border between Missouri and Kansas. In a cooperative response to the regional public safety need, 13 participating agencies from Missouri and Kansas have agreed to work together toward the establishment and maintenance of the Metro Kansas City Emerging Threat Analysis Capability (ALERT/ETAC) initiative, which will include a COPLINK node hosted by the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department.
The COPLINK system will enable authorized law enforcement personnel from each jurisdiction to search and analyze contributing agencies data, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries, to develop actionable, tactical leads -- a process that prior to COPLINK was not possible.
Agencies that will contribute data to the Kansas City ALERT/ETAC COPLINK node created and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate the groundbreaking interstate sharing initiative. Access to the node on a local, regional or federal level is restricted by individual user security clearances and by the sensitivity of the data itself, both of which are governed by strict policy protocols spelled out in the MOU which declares, among other things, what data may be shared, with whom, and when. COPLINK also creates a detailed audit trail for every search conducted. These safeguards help protect the integrity of the data and sensitive information while allowing for the creation of ad hoc task forces to address regionally specific criminal activity.