ACPO use online crime reporting company

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and charity Crimestoppers are to use online self-reporting platform Facewatch, designed to reduce low-level crime.

Hugh Orde, president of ACPO said the move would provide the organisations with access to the latest technology. “The UK police forces through ACPO will engage fully with both organisations in the fight against crime,” he said.

Facewatch is free to police and users and is currently being used by six police forces. The platform cost £1.2m to build using a MySQL database.

Simon Gordon, CEO of Facewatch, said the advantage is the platform has been built outside the police force’s clunky legacy systems and so can enable information sharing more easily.

“It connects police forces and gives the public a single interface to report to the police,” he said.

The company recently launched a mobile app for the identification of police issued images by the public using postcode proximity.

Gordon said he was also in contact with US police forces about using the system.

The time savings for police and everyone involved are huge, he said. As the public is able to self-report and receive a crime reference number in several minutes.