COPLINK® Expands Across Arizona Helping Law Enforcement Thwart Criminal and Gang Activity Across Multiple Jurisdictions

COPLINK® Expands Across Arizona Helping Law Enforcement Thwart Criminal and Gang Activity Across Multiple Jurisdictions

IACP, New Orleans, LA and Tucson, AZ --- October 12, 2007 --- Knowledge Computing Corp. today announced that its award-winning COPLINK® solution suite will be deployed to support the East Valley Gang and Crime Information Fusion Center in Mesa, Arizona. This follows successful deployments in Tucson, Pima County, Phoenix and Maricopa County that support law enforcement agencies in those and other neighboring jurisdictions as well as cross-jurisdictional crime solving initiatives. The announcement was made today in conjunction with the 114th Annual International Association of Police Chiefs (IACP) conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.

"COPLINK’s first commercial deployment in the Tucson Police Department five years ago, and the successes they’ve achieved in solving crime and thwarting gang activity, have inspired over 600 jurisdictions nationwide across 20 states to adopt COPLINK,” said Robert Griffin, CEO of Knowledge Computing Corp. “We are pleased to support the efforts of the East Valley Gang and Crime Information Fusion Center to combat crime and gang activity across their jurisdictions and to have another major deployment in our home state.”

“Gangs and criminals are more mobile today than ever, making it far more difficult to detect the scope of their operations and apprehend them,” said Mesa Police Chief George Gascón.” COPLINK turns the tables by giving law enforcement the advantage, identifying relationships, associations and patterns that will help us reduce criminal and gang activity across the East Valley by getting offenders off the street faster.”

“In Tucson, COPLINK has been an essential tool in our arsenal from the detective’s desk - to the patrol car - to officer’s on the beat who use hand-held devices - rapidly identifying suspects from petty to violent crimes,” said Tucson Police Department’s ISD Administrator James Wysocki. “A study conducted by the Tucson Police Department shows that COPLINK annually creates a return on investment that vastly exceeds the investment we made in the program.”

COPLINK provides unparalleled analysis and decision support for rapidly identifying criminal suspects, relationships and patterns that help solve crime and thwart terrorism. Using a GJXDM compliant interface, it works by allowing vast quantities of structured and seemingly unrelated data - including data currently housed in various incompatible databases and records management systems - to be securely organized, consolidated and rapidly analyzed over a highly secure intranet-based platform.

One search using known or partial facts from an ongoing investigation can produce qualified leads that would otherwise be unapparent in seconds - a process that prior to COPLINK was not possible or often takes days or weeks to accomplish. Through sophisticated analytics, including powerful visualization tools, COPLINK builds "institutional memory," reduces knowledge gaps and prevents criminals from falling through the cracks.
COPLINK currently supports 19 law enforcement agencies across Arizona that participate through deployments in Tucson, Pima County, Phoenix and Maricopa County. With the addition of the East Valley Gang and Crime Information Fusion Center, COPLINK will also provide support to jurisdictions across the East Valley region to thwart crime and gang activity.

Currently, the Tucson and Phoenix Police Departments are also able to share information through their COPLINK deployments. In addition, Tucson has interagency agreements with San Diego, California’s Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS) and the Orange County, California Integrated Law and Justice Consortium (OCILJ) that allow participating agencies to share information across their COPLINK deployments. These interagency networks make it far more difficult for criminals and gangs to operate across multiple jurisdictions undetected and have enabled participating agencies to increase their effectiveness in getting violent and repeat offenders off the street.

When COPLINK is used to create regional or statewide networks, each participating agency has real-time control over what data is shared, with whom and when. In addition, data continues to reside and be updated at its existing source, with automatic refresh mechanisms triggering updates within COPLINK. These safeguards help protect the integrity of the data and sensitive information while allowing for the creation of ad hoc regional task forces to address specific criminal activity.

COPLINK first catapulted into the national spotlight for its proof of concept role following the Montgomery County, Maryland sniper investigation. Today, the solution is in use in over 600 jurisdictions nationwide spanning across 20 states, including four of the nation’s five largest cities, helping police officers fight crime, thwart terrorism and improve community safety. A powerful force multiplier, COPLINK is documented as conservatively providing a 14:1 investigative time advantage, reducing the time it takes to identify qualified suspects, thereby enabling law enforcement to keep more feet on the streets.

Winner of numerous awards, COPLINK was recognized twice by the International Association of Chiefs of Police for deployments in Tucson, Arizona and across the State of Alaska. The Center for Digital Government also recognized COPLINK as one of the best-of-breed and most innovative IT projects undertaken by cities in the nation.

About Knowledge Computing Corporation
Knowledge Computing Corp. provides technology-based crime-fighting solutions to leading edge law enforcement agencies nationwide. Its critically-acclaimed product, COPLINK®, in use since 1998, is based on knowledge management technology first prototyped by top-ranked researchers in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson through a grant by the National Institute of Justice. The technologies developed at Knowledge Computing Corporation have been tested and proven by law enforcement agencies around the country. For more information: www.knowledgecc.com or www.coplink.com.