Bedfordshire Police is one of five forces to have enrolled new cutting edge technology to cut down on every officers pet hate… paperwork.

The firearms training unit are piloting “Chronicle”, which will record, store and recall all the data relating to individual firearms officers at the touch of a button.

Chronicle has been designed by a former firearms instructor, who saw a need for such a software system. Most training officers are still keeping their records on paper, which is just about adequate for keeping the necessary records, but means that they are not necessarily easy to retrieve, store or manage.

Chronicle will allow a single comprehensive record of each officer – whether constable or commander – and all his or her scores on training shoots, fitness -*test*-('")s, specialist disciplines such as VIP protection or hostage rescue. It shows compliance with the national firearms curriculum, logs the granting of authorities for specific firearms operations, and simplifies post-incident procedure as records are in one easily- accessible place. It also has an audit trail so that all the information entered is tagged with the users name and the date of entry.

The challenge was to create something which did the job, but was simple to learn and use. Sgt Luis Ponte, a former firearms instructor who worked closely with Bedfordshire’s unit when he was based at neighbouring Hertfordshire, is behind the idea of Chronicle.

A computer-expert friend came up with the technology to run a programme that would do what Sgt Ponte had envisaged some time ago – but although it worked, it took some time to refine such a technical product to being user-friendly enough to offer to police officers!

Head of Bedfordshire Police Firearms Training Department, Sgt Keith Tierney, said: “What’s good about this system is that we will have all our information on each officer, and the firearms commanders, in one place that will be easy to research. It will actually save us quite a lot of time. I didn’t want to get involved with something that was actually going to cause the department more work or be a waste of time and money because it was too complicated to bother using.”