On the Job 

Giving law enforcement agencies the right tools to do their job — and consistently enhancing those tools — has always been a top priority of Attorney General Dave Yost.

The most recent example is an upgrade to the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway (OHLEG), a quantum improvement that radically multiplies the system’s effectiveness in fighting crime. In a nutshell, the change allows local agencies to access unprecedented levels of actionable information, better equipping them to protect communities.

OHLEG was created 20 years ago by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation to break down silos among police agencies. It’s a secure web-based platform that allows agencies to efficiently share information among themselves and to access dozens of criminal justice databases.

The upgrade, an application called OHLEG SmartSearch, improves the speed and efficiency of investigations by streamlining these databases into a single, powerful search.

Whereas OHLEG users previously had to conduct time-consuming searches in each of the databases, they can now search all at once.

“We met with chiefs, sheriffs, detectives, analysts and officers across Ohio,” Yost said. “They told us they needed a faster way to search, a smarter way to see data, and a way to stop running the same search a dozen different times.”

Among the databases are those from the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; the Computerized Criminal History System; the Security Threat Group; electronic offender registries (for arson, sex offenses and violent offenses); the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles; the Ohio Courts Network; and the Ohio Protection Order Registry.

“With OHLEG SmartSearch,” Yost said, “you can look across virtually any OHLEG record, no matter which section it’s in, and instantly find phone numbers, emails, reports, connections that used to take hours to unearth.”

Also accessible through SmartSearch is data from the records-management systems of more than 300 law enforcement agencies participating in SwiftShare, a statewide network for sharing crime information across departments.

SmartSearch is more than just a better search tool, however. It also introduces advanced mapping and data-analytics capabilities to help agencies track and better understand criminal trends, patterns and activity in their communities.

Notably, SmartSearch will continue to get better.

“It is built to grow, to evolve, to connect more data than OHLEG has ever accessed before,” Yost said. “The more agencies that share their information, the more powerful this tool becomes for everyone.”