What I found when we looked closer
El Cajon Police Department publicly lays out a highly segmented investigative structure. Its investigation software page says the District Investigations Unit handles property crimes including theft, auto theft, fraud and vandalism; the Major Crimes Unit handles homicides, missing persons, and other crimes of violence; the Special Investigations Unit handles gang, narcotic, vice, and fugitive investigations; and the Family Protection Unit is responsible for domestic violence, crimes against children, sex crimes, and related offender registration. The department also says its Gang Street Team consists of one sergeant and four officers, while the Metropolitan Division assigns specially trained officers to each of the city’s four major high school campuses.
That means the first report has to do more than close out a call. It often needs to support immediate detective assignment, prosecution prep, or school-based follow-up.
What their people told us
Code Four is great.
We've been using it a ton.
Following one report through the building
The first thing we do with a new department is trace where a report goes after the officer hits submit. Here, it passes through 4 hands:
- 1Patrol officer
- 2Supervisor
- 3District Investigations, Major Crimes, Special Investigations, or Family Protection
- 4Gang Street Team / school SROs
Every one of those readers needs the same facts from the first draft. That is what shaped what we built.
What we built for them
A patrol report in El Cajon may go to property crimes, major crimes, gang and narcotics, or family protection. A structured, source-linked draft reads the same way to all of them.
Gang and narcotics work runs on connections between people and places across cases. Insights is designed to surface those across footage and records.
Family Protection Unit cases (domestic violence, crimes against children) need the most careful handling of any footage the department holds.
What we're watching
These are the signals that will tell us whether it's working here:
- Reports routed to the right unit on first assignment
- Cross-case links surfaced for gang investigations
- Family-protection footage redacted before sharing
Figures on this page come from the department's own published materials. We only publish Code Four results after the department reviews them.
