IRVINE : Reserve Officer Uses Computer Expertise

Richard Thompson has spent most of his three years as a reserve officer sitting behind a computer screen, away from guns and high-speed chases.

But Thompson’s expertise in computer information gathering has proven to be a valuable tool for the Irvine Police Department and has even helped detectives in their investigations.

This month, Thompson was named Orange County’s Reserve Officer of the Year. In honoring the 43-year-old Irvine computer executive, the California Law Enforcement Reserve Coordinators Assn. praised him for putting useful computer skills in the hands of officers.

“I just wanted to do something for my community,” Thompson said of his decision to become a part-time volunteer officer in 1990. “I went to talk with them and showed them I had computer expertise. One thing led to another.”

Three years later, police officials credit Thompson with helping computerize the department’s Policy and Procedures Manual and showing officers how to get financial data as part of their investigations.

Working on the manual was Thompson’s first task. Over a year, he transformed a “very heavy and thick” book containing many of the department’s rules into a streamlined computer-designed document that is easily accessible to officers.

In the process, Thompson and department officials changed the layout, added graphics and rewrote some of the weighty passages.

“It’s user-friendly,” he said. “It’s much easier to read now. When an officer needs information about a specific policy, he can now get to it much faster and completely.”

Irvine Police Sgt. Jim Broomfield agreed.

“They redid the whole thing,” he said. “It’s much easier to read.”

More recently, Thompson has been showing detectives how to find and use credit information, escrow papers, grant deeds and living trusts to help solve cases.

Such documents allow law enforcement officials to track the flow of money and assets--clues that are often crucial in solving some business-related crimes, he said.

“Sometimes, the major candy bar we are looking for is in these documents,” he said.

The computer work comes naturally to Thompson, who owns RTA Business Information Inc., an Irvine-based information services company.

In the future, he plans to work with officers on a criminal database that will allow police to view pictures of suspects and their weapons on a computer screen.