OKLAHOMA P.D. USES COMPUTERS TO SOLVE FILL-IN-THE-BLANK PROBLEM FOR UCR'S
AND OTHER FORMS

MCALESTER, OK--The McAlester Police Department in McAlester, Oklahoma, is
blazing new trails in police paperwork with a computer software program
that makes it possible to fill in Uniform Crime Report forms, accident
reports and other forms quickly, easily and neatly.

The McAlester P.D. uses a program called Formbuster that speeds the process
of completing any paper form by turning it into a computer document. In
less than three minutes, McAlester personnel can import the image of any
blank police report into the department's computer with a fax machine or a
scanner, then set "hot tabs" wherever data needs to be filled in. These
tabs make it possible to advance to the next blank simply by hitting Tab
or Enter, greatly speeding the process of moving from spot to spot on the
form.

Once a form is installed, it can be retrieved instantly from the computer,
and the hot tabs activate every time that form is called up on the screen.
This saves hours of time usually wasted hunting for the proper form,
hunting and pecking on a typewriter or filling out forms by hand.

"For me, the hardest part of police work has always been the paperwork,"
says Don Troussel, a 24-year McAlester officer who brought Formbuster into
the department. "Now that our forms are completed on computer, they look
better, they're easier to read and they get done faster."

In addition, with the hot tabs automatically advancing to each blank, the
new system eliminates the problem of accidentally skipping a blank and
having a report returned because it is incomplete.

Because the McAlester P.D. has only one computer, Troussel purchased a
laptop for himself and installed Formbuster on it. He now completes
reports at the crime scene and prints them out when he returns to the
station.

"As our department uses the program more, the quality of our reports is
rising," Troussel says. "It's made a big difference."
 
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