Fargo Police adding online reporting system

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – Fargo Police Department is joining a growing trend of departments across the country using an online system for lower level crime.

Fargo Police is adding a new way for people to report crimes to improve efficiency. The Desk Officer Reporting System, or DORS, has increased in popularity in police departments across the country. The system is meant to be used for lower priority crimes and community involvement is essential as anyone is allowed to report a crime.

“It does provide the use of technology to make our department more efficient, so we’re constantly again striving in a forward thinking way to best utilize our personnel resources which are the most valuable resources that we have, ensuring that we’re serving the community in the best way possible,” Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski said.

It can be used on a web browser or an app and will work on any device from desktop computers to iPads.

“That’s going to allow people to report certain crimes online or through their mobile phone without having to wait for an officer to respond and these are the types of crimes that are not in progress, the suspect is not known, there’s no safety issue, there’s no evidence to collect. We get a large amount of those types of calls that right now require an officer to go into the scene and it takes them away from some of the other higher priority things that they could be otherwise doing,” Zibolski said.

Fargo Police is happy to have another added piece to help them solve crimes and to give less people a reason to call or have an officer present.

“The department personnel, the officers have asked for this for some time as well to help alleviate the large call volume. I mean, over the course of time we have a lot of calls coming in that don’t have a law enforcement nexus after all and that’ll be a different review process but things like this that are low priority, although we recognize they are important to the person affected, just don’t require the officer to physically be there in order for us to get this,” Zibolski said.

Police are fine tuning the system now and plan to launch it on March 28th.