The Records Bureau functions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are 12 full-time and 2 part-time police clerks assigned to work in this bureau. These employees have to be multi-skilled, as they are required to learn all the procedures and systems needed to maintain confidential police records, and to operate a specialized teletype system and multiple other office equipment. Police clerks also assist the public as needed, help other agencies with their requests, search female arrestees, assist officers in the transportation of female arrestees, and, on occasion, care for infants and young children of arrestees.
Police clerks type, distribute, and file all necessary paperwork to the court, district attorneys, and our own detectives. The police clerk must be knowledgeable in the processing of a variety of reports, including: Arrest, Crime, Missing Person, Juvenile, Incident, Follow-up, and Evidence. They must also process stolen, stored, and recovered vehicles. Each year, members of the Records Bureau process over 13,000 reports and over 28,000 citations.The police department has a state-of-the-art Records Management System (RMS), which allows the police clerks to input valuable information from all police reports. This data can then be used as an investigative tool in criminal cases. The RMS also captures statistical crime and arrest data that is reported on a monthly basis to the Bureau of Criminal Statistics and the FBI.
Another area of responsibility for the police clerk is the “Optical Imaging System,” which allows for the scanning, retrieving, printing, and routing of a facsimile image of any report from work sites within the department.