Clery Report

Josh developed the back-end for Valdosta State University’s “Clery Report” in PHP and MySQL. Administrators can log-in to the back-end portal to create, read, update, and delete reported crime incidents. There was previously an on-going concern that incidents were being recorded on paper during police shifts first and then later handed into the office administrator, who then translated the handwritten data into the system. This was a time-consuming task being done manually twice per day.

For security reasons, the police chief did not want to give everyone in the department access to the site back-end, so access to remains with just the administrators. Josh imagined a way to lessen the control without sacrificing site security by creating an easy-to-use spreadsheet template for police officers to enter their own incident reports. The submitted reports spreadsheet is then accessed by the shift administrator, who saves the spreadsheet as a CSV file and uploads it into the back-end.

The VSU website uses this database to query a Clery report, an internal report legally required of all campus police departments. Users may search the report by date to see any crimes reported. Josh continued to update the code and database as the project evolved with UPD needs, adding many new custom features.