SMARTDRAW IN LAW ENFORCEMENT:

Arresting Diagrams in Criminal Investigations

Under The Gun
Sgt. Larry Barksdale heads up the Crime Scene Investigation Unit for the Lincoln Police Department. He's responsible for managing criminal cases and creating diagrams of the crime scenes.

"I'd been drawing many of the diagrams with pencil and paper," said Sgt. Barksdale. "I realized I needed a computerized system, but I wanted something very simple."

Sgt. Barksdale wanted to import photos, images, and icons directly into his diagrams. He also needed a collection of mathematical and scientific symbols he could just "drag and drop" into his drawings.

He did a search on the Internet, and found SmartDraw's free trial.

Following the Clues
Sgt. Barksdale immediately liked what he saw.

"I really wanted something that was easy to use, and SmartDraw is just as easy as picking up a pencil and paper," he said.

After quickly reading through SmartDraw's online tutorials, Sgt. Barksdale was up and running.

SmartDraw offers thousands of symbols, images, and templates, including several thousand customized for police work. SmartDraw's Crime & Accidents collection is packed with symbols for automobiles, traffic signals, debris, roads, weapons, and much more.

"I found the street and traffic templates to be very helpful," he said.

SmartDraw works hand-in-hand with Microsoft Office^®, allowing users to work seamlessly with almost any other program. Sgt. Barksdale was happy to discover he could simply copy and paste icons, images, and photos directly from Microsoft Office^® documents into SmartDraw.

"The ability to import these other icons and images is an amazing feature," he said.

Case Closed
Sgt. Barksdale now uses SmartDraw several times a week. Some of his colleagues are so impressed with the results, that they're giving SmartDraw a shot too.

"The other investigators are starting to use it, and they really like how it works," said Sgt. Barksdale.

In addition to his job as a case manager in the criminal investigation team, Sgt. Barksdale teaches at a local university. Encouraged by his success at work, he started using SmartDraw to create diagrams for his class presentations.

"The students were really impressed," he said. "They were able to use SmartDraw in class without any training."

In the end, SmartDraw has proved itself a valuable, time-saving tool for the investigators at the Lincoln Police Department.

"SmartDraw is a relatively inexpensive, and very useful crime scene drawing software," he said. "It definitely saves time!"

Officer Crespy has even discovered that he can use SmartDraw for more than just accident and crime diagrams.