Fla. law enforcement to use COPLINK tools

Government Computing News
by Trudy Walsh
09/26/07

Florida's Regional Law Enforcement eXchange (R-LEX) project will use COPLINK crime analysis tools from Knowledge Computing, the company said today.

Using a Global Justice XML Data Model-compliant interface, COPLINK allows large amounts of data in many disparate forms to be organized, consolidated and analyzed over a secure browser-based platform. The software also makes use of analytics and visualization tools to help law enforcement officials determine patterns of crime.

R-LEX will be accessible only to authorized law enforcement investigators, detectives, line officers and crime analysts. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), 11 state criminal justice agencies and three of Florida's seven domestic-security task force regions will contribute data from 160 sources, including traffic citations, pawn data, dispatch records and local warrants.

Plans for R-LEX involve connecting four remaining regions, including Tampa. This future project, called FLEX, will work with FDLE, state agencies and Florida's seven regions.

R-LEX will use metadata mapping tools from Sypherlink, which will map data to a central NIEM-compliant warehouse hub built by system integrator Keane. The hub will in turn feed into COPLINK.

The project is funded primarily through grants from the Homeland Security Department.

Project manager Mike Phillips, who oversees the Florida Law Enforcement eXchange (FLEX) initiative, described R-LEX as "a powerful tool for fighting crime across multiple jurisdictions statewide, and it's among the first to incorporate the National Information Exchange Model standards, which create greater flexibility for sharing critical information between local, state and federal law enforcement."