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Scenarios for Investigative Case Management

This topic describes how investigative case management might be used. You might use investigative case management differently, depending on your business model. This topic includes the following scenarios:

• Managing Incidents and Cases
• Managing Child-Welfare Incidents
• Managing Suspects and Groups

Managing Incidents and Cases

An agent at a call center for a police department receives a call from a local citizen who wants to report a disruptive gathering at a nearby home. She creates an incident report and assigns an incident investigator.

The agent receives a second call from an anonymous caller reporting gunshots near the location of the earlier disturbance. She creates a second incident report, and then, using information that the caller provides, creates a suspect record and a group record and associates these records with the incident. Because the incident involves a potential threat to public safety, she sends an investigator to the crime scene.

The investigator follows up on the incident and finds that several persons are injured. He assigns his work time to the incident, and then decides to escalate the incident to a case. From the incident record, the investigator creates a case record and attaches several digital photographs from the crime scene to the case record. He records the activities that he completed while on the scene, adds a public note sharing details from interviews with his team, and then adds a private note for an unverified tip that he receives.

The investigator queries his team's open caseload for other cases associated with the same group. He finds several other cases that another team member is working on. The investigator associates his case with the team member's cases. The two investigators confer to decide which of them is listed as the primary investigator for the case.

Managing Child-Welfare Incidents

An agent who works at a Child Protection Services agency receives a call from a nurse at a hospital who suspects that the parents of one of her patients is physically abusing the child patient. The agent creates an incident report using the information that the nurse provides. She notes in the report that the nurse is a mandatory reporter because the nurse must report her suspicions for legal reasons. This incident report includes information about the nurse, her allegations, the child, the child's parents, and other relevant information.

The agent immediately performs a safety assessment of the incident to help her determine the safety of the child. After performing this assessment, the agent knows that the situation is urgent. Meanwhile, the agent's manager reviews the incident report and decides that sufficient information exists to further investigate the incident, so he approves the incident. Consequently, the screening decision for the incident report changes to a status of Screened In. Subsequently, the agent escalates the incident to a case for investigation and assigns a social worker to the case. The social worker visits the family's home, talks with the parents and child, evaluates the home environment, and uses the gathered information to perform a family assessment of the case to help him determine the family's ability to care for the child.

After performing the family assessment, the social worker decides to temporarily place the child in the custody of her grandparents. The social worker also creates a service plan for the case contacts. This plan includes scheduled visits to a therapist for the child and the parents. To prepare for the case's court hearing that is scheduled in a few months, the social worker keeps track of court documents, court correspondence, and court activities that relate to the case. After the court hearing, the social worker records information about court decisions for the case.

Managing Suspects and Groups

A detective with a municipal police department is investigating a local gang in connection with a series of homicides. A colleague tells him that a suspect in a recent shooting incident might have ties to the gang that the detective is investigating. The detective reviews the shooting case and notes that witnesses identified the suspect using an obvious alias. He searches the suspect records for the alias and finds a match, confirming that an individual using the alias and matching the suspect's description is associated with a gang he believes is involved in several shooting cases.

The detective accesses the gang's group record and reviews the hierarchy to determine the suspect's relationship with other gang members. He finds that one of the suspect's subordinates is a previous shooting victim. The detective uses an informant to gather additional information, placing the suspect at the recent incident at the time of the shooting. The detective determines that the suspect might have had a motive and the opportunity to commit the previous crime. He updates the suspect record with the activities he performed and the notes he gathered, and then generates a Case Overview Report about the shooting investigation to use in requesting a warrant for the suspect's arrest.