Primal Scream by Michael Slade Page B

asked DeClercq.
    "I told the corporal guiding them to point out our Acknowledgements." Lewis flipped forward in the booklet to page iii:
     
    This questionnaire and computer-aided system used by the ViCLAS units are based on the research and experience of members of the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (VICAP), the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation's Sex Crimes Analysis System, the Washington State Attorney General's Homicide Investigation and Tracking System, the New York State Police's Homicide Assessment and Lead Tracking System, and RCMP E Division Violent Crime Analysis Unit's Major Crime Organizational System.
     
    "You brown-noser," said DeClercq, grinning.
    "Ours is the first time any country has programmed a system for murders, sex crimes, missing persons, and abductions on a national level. The FBI's contains just murders. ViCLAS casts a wider net, and bridges language barriers through no key words, just point and click. So we're asking the FBI to look at upgrading our system by adopting it in theirs .
    "The piss-off," added Lewis, "is we've got foreign police beating a path to our door, yet it's a hard sell to convince our own to use the system."
    "We're notorious for overburdening our detachments with paper," said DeClercq. "A survey of twenty-five hundred Members found 'excessive paperwork' the top cause of stress. No wonder with nine hundred different operation forms to fill out. We'd rather tackle a crook than wrestle with an arrest report. Risk from working alone was far below. I pray the Simplified Paperless Universal Reporting System helps."
    "SPURS won't help me," grumbled Lewis. "The ViCLAS joke with Members is 'We're not here to prevent crime—we're here to report it.' "
    "The Bic is mightier than the Smith & Wesson, eh?" said DeClercq. "A cop can pass through his whole career without drawing his gun, but an hour into the job will see him Sourish a pen. We don't lug briefcases around because we like big lunches. Someone in Ottawa seeks to explore the outer limits of clerkishness at the Force's expense. Why sixteen pages of forms for run-of-the-mill impaireds?"
    "One thing for sure," said Chandler. "You'll never see me write up another UFO."
    "You're kidding?" laughed Lewis.
    "I wish I were. That file was a nightmare from the idealistic period of my service. This guy swore he saw a UFO over the Rockies. From what he reported, it could have been a distress flare. If I had written it up like that, it would have taken two pages. But no, I was dumb and went by the book. Twelve volumes, each six to eight inches thick, and sure enough, our manual has procedure for UFOs. In following it, I had to check with National Defense, Search and Rescue, the Weather Service, nearby airports, air traffic controllers, et cetera, et cetera, for rational explanations. The file kept growing. Next, calls and letters started coming in. Scientific groups, wanting me to check this and that, find witnesses, work with Fox Mulder. Before long the file was thicker than the manual. But never again. Unless I see the UFO land, then little green buggers running around."
    Droopy bedroom eyelids made Lewis look like he was going to cry. "That's the problem," he said. "It's hard to persuade skeptical cops to invest an hour in filling out a ViCLAS report. Behavioral analysis is mumbo-jumbo to some, and those who already have a suspect see us as a waste of time. The big push now is to get one hundred percent reporting, with fifteen thousand cases a year flowing in. Veteran cops moan they've yet to see a computer that'll solve crime. We reply a computer will never replace the gut feelings of a detective, but—like the Fingerprint Identification System and Forensic Lab—ViCLAS will be a useful tool. If tied to a national DNA databank, this will be twenty-first-century policing."
    "We may need a law that makes filling out a ViCLAS report mandatory," said DeClercq. "Till then I'll make it easy for you with this