A rape case going cold. A media-circulated suspect composite generating no leads. A brand-new regional data sharing system that had barely been tested.

Gary, Indiana, Police Chief Garnett Watson figured he had nothing to lose. He logged onto the new system and started searching addresses near where the rape had occurred. Before long, the system returned a hit — the name of a subject with whom neighboring Hammond Police Department officers have had contact. The subject was already in jail on a different sexual assault charge.

This conclusion probably wouldn't have been reached had the Gary and Hammond police departments not been sharing data via the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM). A way for law enforcement agencies to share records and other data without investing in new systems or paying their existing vendors to customize interfaces with each other, the GJXDM underlies several regional data sharing initiatives around the United States. National adoptions include the Amber Alert system and the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS), but local agencies are sharing too. Following are just a few examples of how police are putting GJXDM to use in their broader communities.

The Northwest Indiana Criminal Justice Network began when two agencies, already using New World Systems' Aegis product, recognized the resources they could leverage by implementing New World's Regional Data Sharing (RDS) product. According to Ken Lang, New World's vice president of marketing, RDS extracts data from Aegis and other disparate public safety systems into an XML document, then formats the data using Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). It therefore supports a subset of the GJXDM Version 3.0, including cases, offenses, subjects, property, booking, warrants, arrests and accidents. The RDS version featuring complete GJXDM conformance (as far as the standard has been written) will be released later this year.

RDS became available in 2001. In 2003, the Hammond PD approached the Gary Police Department about sharing the system's cost. The Gary PD, which had recently acquired Aegis CAD/mobile system, agreed to buy the RDS server if Hammond PD bought the software. The two agencies ran the newly created network over a T1 line and then began to reach out to others. Since then, the East Chicago Police Department, the Lake County Sheriff's Office, about 12 of the 17 local jurisdictions inside the county and even the regional High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) have joined. The HIDTA's intelligence links to the FBI, DEA, ATF and ICE, and other federal agencies give the local and county agencies added resources.

Not all agencies in the network use Aegis. The Lake County Sheriff's Office uses Spillman Technologies' RMS, so joining the New World-driven RDS constituted a true interoperability test. (Spillman is also working toward GJXDM conformance.) Yet the other agencies wanted the sheriffs department to join the network because so many offenders — especially those who commit felonies — go to the county jail following arrest. New World, located in Troy, Michigan, built a custom interface to Spillman's database, which cost the agency extra. Additionally, to allow smaller agencies to join, the network bought several user seats and allows some small members to use them for free. "It's definitely a way for small agencies with small budgets to have a robust system they otherwise could not afford," Lang notes.

Besides the implications for cases such as the rape in Gary, Watson decided to invest in RDS to promote officer safety and productivity. (He calls it "Google for cops.") The Gary PD is the largest agency in Lake County, making numerous criminal contacts per year, so Watson believes participation in the network is a "no brainer." "It really gives us an edge when dealing with offenders," he says. "The more information cops on the street have, the safer they are. For example, the records we see from the other agencies include every photograph they've ever taken of various offenders, which is important because offenders' appearances can change over time."

As the RDS implementation continues, Watson anticipates more creative uses. "We're talking about computerizing our field interviews," he says, "as well as standardizing offense reports across all jurisdictions on the network." Pull-down menus and other automatic aids would help officers avoid misspellings, which can confuse search efforts.

Watson distinguishes between information and intelligence sharing. Information such as criminal records, field contacts, and wants and warrants are sharable with everyone; intelligence may involve deeper digging. "The officers can't just pull the information into their squad cars, but the resources exist," he says. "We have a good rapport with the HIDTA intelligence center, and if we need intelligence, all it takes is a phone call." The network does make it easier to combine resources; two investigators looking for the same information can collaborate.

Although the indirect link to the federal agencies is now used only for drug investigations, Watson hopes other investigations will follow. In the meantime, the network will continue reaching out to other Indiana law enforcement agencies. "It's easy to buy into RDS, because agencies still own their data and thus control who accesses it," he says. To that end, the network's goal is to achieve interoperability with I-CLEAR, the Illinois Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting System. A joint Chicago Police Department-Illinois State Police effort, I-CLEAR integrates Chicago's Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) and the state police's Law Enforcement Agencies Data System (LEADS) to warehouse both agencies' significant criminal histories in one package, allowing every Illinois agency to access and analyze the data.

The Los Angeles county justice community had been part of a data sharing effort for nearly 20 years before being approached to join RISA in 2004. "We've been using real-time data sharing with the California Department of Justice since 2001," explains retired Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Lt. John Aerts, now a consultant with his former agency. "When our officers make an arrest, the subject's entire state criminal record is pulled into our system within minutes." Aerts, who's involved with the GJXDM Task Force, as well as the initiative to replace the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) with the National Data Exchange (NDEx), is well acquainted with the standard.

RISA originated as a local San Diego Harbor Police Department (HPD) program to help predict potential terrorist and criminal activities. Then-Chief Betty Kelepecz wanted to integrate pre-incident indicator data from San Diego's Airport Access Control System, Marine Operations Information System and Port Activity Data System, as well as field incident report (FIR) data stored in HPD's Records Management System (RMS). "We use FIRs when we make contact with suspicious persons whose activities, like videotaping bridges, aren't enough to arrest them," Aerts says. "Every officer writes FIRs, and every agency's RMS should handle them. They're a compact version of full incident reports, so everything — person, vehicle, location and narrative information — is shown. We wanted all the officers to see whether other agencies had come in contact with the same subjects."

With all these components in mind, Kelepecz turned to San Diego-based Crossflo Systems to provide a scaleable data sharing platform for the pre-incident indicator project. She also wanted to use the suite of intelligence analysis and visualization tools developed by Memex Inc. to turn the collected data into actionable intelligence, hoping the network would show patterns of potential behavior she wouldn't otherwise have observed.

Knowing other agencies would benefit from the same information collected in San Diego, she asked Crossflo to regionalize her project. The Memex intelligence management and analysis system had already been integrated with Crossflo's data sharing solution, so Crossflo needed only to use its middleware solution, DataExchange, to give the additional agencies a way to share their FIR data. Aerts says not every agency saved FIRs in an RMS, so the project needed DataExchange to consolidate all the FIRs with the other information. "DataExchange allows information to move among disparate systems via GJXDM," says Aerts. "Without it, we would've had to pay each repository's vendor to publish information on their separate servers, then translate it into XML for subscribers — the other departments — to view. DataExchange bypasses that step by connecting its DataExchange Agent to each database to take care of all translation, publication and subscription issues. It allows the agency to do business as it always has: once an officer hits 'Send,' the agent moves that information to the DataExchange Server, where it publishes for the subscriber to see."

Aerts says this solution respects agencies' data ownership needs. "The DataExchange Server maintains publishing and subscription rules. Each originating agency decides what percentages of its data can be seen by public defenders, courts, other law enforcement agencies and other criminal justice entities," he says. "The server acts like a traffic cop, directing the flow of information."

The RISA pilot proved the GJXDM's ability to move information and that it could work as a functional solution. "Depending on the number of agencies wanting to join, you might need to scale it larger, but this solution could be implemented anywhere in the nation," Aerts says.

CrimeCog Technologies Inc.'s solution is unique in that its target market is composed of small- to medium-sized agencies. Although the company prefers not to disclose its client list or grant media contacts, chief technology officer Sam Basilico notes its network is growing quickly after just two years of being in business.

CrimeCog's origins lie in TRW Inc., which once provided mission-critical applications to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Red Cross, and automobile manufacturers. TRW's Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) had been deployed to small rural communities when Northrop Grumman acquired TRW and shut down all application service provider (ASP) projects, including CJIS. At that point, CrimeCog's founders, one of whom is a retired command officer with the Michigan State Police, began working with Northrop Grumman to license its solution, E*Justice System, to pick up where CJIS had left off. (Northrop Grumman is currently implementing E*Justice as part of its contract to integrate Puget Sound, Washington, law enforcement agencies.)

E*Justice is an Oracle application; so through the GJXDM, it's compatible with all CAD, RMS and like interfaces. However, Northrop Grumman targets a market of larger agencies whose budgets range from $60 million to $100 million. CrimeCog, which is privately funded by angel investors and builds its solution on an ASP, can afford to keep costs low: just $300 per user to cover Northrop Grumman royalties. "The ASP provides the ability to share infrastructure cost among users," says Basilico. "One server supports over 200 officers, so no agency has to buy its own. This also means the agency doesn't have to pull an officer off the street to perform routine information technology maintenance."

The low overhead also enables Milford, Michigan-based, CrimeCog to supply customers with any equipment they need, including in-car computers. Although DHS grants will help offset the burdens many agencies face from the cuts to the COPS, Byrne, and other grant programs, Basilico warns the money won't be able to buy or upgrade computers. "We've made it part of our mission to provide all the tools agencies need to share information."

The end CrimeCog product is an enterprise solution that tracks offenders from incident through criminal justice system, but its potential doesn't end there. Because it's an incident-based application, it can be used to track information in any situation, including mass casualty events or immigration enforcement initiatives. Basilico says police departments could interface with fire or other departments by extending CrimeCog's search capability into the relevant agencies' databases. Even citizens can view limited information, such as sex offender information, via Web portal to the CrimeCog data center.

CrimeCog is working to develop what Basilico calls "pockets" of four to five integrated counties. "Criminals don't stop at borders," he says. Depending on how much data an agency wants to share, it can take a matter of days or weeks to build an interface with a disparate system. "Many of our clients prefer to share only basic data, like names and offenses. If requesting officers want more than that, they can call the agency that owns it and cooperate with their investigators."

CrimeCog makes data entry as well as sharing more efficient. "An officer might typically take several hours to enter 28 different kinds of data," Basilico explains. "CrimeCog reduces that time by half, because the officer only enters the data once and the system 'remembers' what's been entered after that." CrimeCog also streamlines efficiency is at the corrections level. One of the company's clients uses the system to check inmate biometric identification to ensure the right person is being released and that no warrants have been issued prior to release.

In sum, says Aerts, "We've been ready and able to use the GJXDM; it's just been a matter of getting others on board. It's been very helpful to us, in fact, that the DOJ and DHS now require GJXDM conformance as a condition of their grant funding. You can use the GJXDM to share anything. The more resources that are added — for instance, traffic citations and sex offenders — to an intelligence-driven police system, the better. In law enforcement lots of systems contain data and it's important to be able to turn it first into usable information and then into intelligence."