Records

The Records Division is staffed by one Records Supervisor and two full-time Records Clerks. The division is responsible for storing, indexing and disseminating records produced by police officers in the course of their duties. All “calls for service”, or CFS, where police reports are made become part of the records system. Most reports usually contain a narrative describing the events that took place and often include the names of reporting parties, victims, suspects, arrested subjects, and witnesses. Accident reports contain vehicle information, estimated damage value, and a diagram of the crash events.

In addition to compiling incident reports, the Records Division is also responsible for submitting National Incident-Base Reporting System (NIBRS) data to the federal government for the purposes of crime data analysis. The NIBRS data is an important part of law enforcement, in that it helps identify trends and allows departments to tailor their policing to combat a certain index of crime.

Obtaining Incident/Crash Reports

Incident Reports
If a “call for service” prompted the officer to make a police report of the incident, the resulting report is available for public release. Citizens can obtain a copy of the incident report by coming to the Public Safety Center between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday-Friday. There is a small fee for obtaining a copy of the report, which you can find below. The following conditions may prevent the release of some reports or some information within the reports:

• The report of any incident currently under investigation cannot be released.
• If the incident has not cleared court, the report cannot be released.
• If the report contains the names of juveniles, those names will be redacted.

Crash Reports
The Dickinson Police Departments offers two types of crash reports: Full reports or Short-form reports. Full reports are done by officers when 1.) combined damage between all vehicles exceeds $4,000 or 2.) the crash involved injury. Short-form reports are done by officers when combined vehicle damage is less than $4,000 – generally the little “door dings” and fender-benders.

Your insurance company will generally obtain the police reports for you. If not, you may obtain a copy by coming to the Public Safety Center during normal business hours as stated above. Like incident reports, crash reports also have a small fee which you can find below.

Fee Schedule