The Goshen Police Department has received a federal grant to update its crime data reporting software.
The $284,751 grant will pay for updates needed because the FBI added new reported statistics and the old system is no longer compatible.
The grant will cover updating the software systems for all police in Elkhart County except Elkhart City Police Department.
Goshen Police Assistant Chief Jose Miller says the new system requires more data on crimes. He said that could be helpful to police and victims.
“It will be beneficial to be able to have different breakdowns of the type of crimes, I think as far as it kind of defines more of what we’re specifically looking at in a situation versus just a generalized crime.”
Miller said some of the most important data the system will collect is on relationships between victims and perpetrators. So police, for example, will be able to tell if a lot of random crimes are happening, or if more crimes are domestic-type disputes.
He said they hope to have the system up and running, and all officers trained on it in the next year.