APD announces transition to national crime reporting system

The Asheville Police Department has transitioned to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). NIBRS collects data on each single crime occurrence and provides information on incidents, offenses, victims and known offenders for 52 specific crimes in 24 major offense categories. The previous method of reporting under the North Carolina Incident Based Reporting (IBR) collected and reported data based only on part 1 crimes (7 specific crimes).

 

With the transition to NIBRS there is a chance that crime rates will appear to have increased. In order to address this appearance and compatibility to previous reporting methods, APD will continue to report in both IBR and NIBRS for the first few months.

 

What does the transition mean to the Asheville Police Department?

  • More comprehensive data collection
  • More transparent crime reporting
  • More accessibility to crime data
  • Crime data modernization

 

What the NIBRS transition means to the residents of Asheville:

  • More accountability to the residents of the status of public safety within the city
  • More accountability to the residents of the most efficient and effective use of city resources
  • More transparency with crime reporting

 

The FBI is requiring law enforcement agencies nationwide to transition to NIBRS by 2021 and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) requires North Carolina agencies to transition by January 2019.