Online Reporting - Shoplifting

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

The Office of Information Technology worked collaboratively with the Baltimore County Police Department and County retailers, to develop an automated solution allowing a retailer’s Loss Prevention Officer (LPO) to facilitate reports for shoplifting suspects. This process automation allows the LPO to input the required information for an official police report, verify if the suspect is wanted for other crimes and provides the ability to give court hearing information to the suspect before being released without requiring the assistance of a county Police Officer in the majority of cases. In the former process, LPOs were required to apprehend the suspect and contact the police so that a report could be taken. In many cases this led to many hours of wait time for the County Police to arrive on the scene and the inability of the LPO to continue to protect the premises/retail establishment from other illegal acts. Automating the process into a Web based solution has decreased the average time to process a shoplifting suspect by more than 50% from an average of one plus hours to less than an hour.