AUDIT COMMITTEE SUMMARY
September 19, 2017
Follow-up Audit of the San Antonio Police Department’s
Crisis Response Team Operations
Report Issued August 3, 2017
Audit Objective
The audit objective for the follow-up audit was to determine if action plans made as a result of audit recommendations were effectively implemented.
Background
The San Antonio Police Department’s Crisis Response Team (CRT) was created in September 1996. The CRT serves as an advocate for zero tolerance of family violence by providing prevention, consultation, and direct services to affected individuals, families, and groups.
An audit of CRT operations was completed on September 2016. The objective of the audit was to determine if CRT operations are in compliance with policies and procedures and are effective in meeting the needs of the community. This audit identified control deficiencies for the following areas:
• Staff was not complying with policies and procedures in areas related to case documentation, core essential training, and monitoring of community outreach efforts.
• Types of activities reported by the six CRT units were inconsistent, making it difficult to measure performance and effectiveness of the CRT operations.
• A periodic review of user access to the RMS application was not performed to ensure only authorized and approved users have access.
SAPD management agreed with the conclusions and developed action plans to address the audit recommendations.
Audit Scope & Methodology
The audit scope of the follow-up audit was limited to the recommendations and corrective action plans made in the original report for the time frame from January to March 2017.
The audit methodology included interviews with the CRT units to obtain an understanding of newly implemented controls. We reviewed source documents such as monthly activity reports, employee files, and case documentation. Our testing criteria included the CRT Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) that were updated in November 2016.
Audit Conclusions
The San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) established effective controls to monitor compliance with guidance outlined in the CRT Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Specifically:
• A process was established to ensure that responding officers provide domestic violence reports and 2089-TAs (threat assessments) to the CRT in a timely manner.
• CRT employees are tracking and reporting core essential training hours and maintain adequate support documentation to verify completion.
• The information to be included in the Record Management System (RMS) was defined to ensure adequate documentation of domestic violence cases.
• Activity types such as community outreach, which serve as performance measures, were defined to ensure consistent tracking for monthly activity reports by all CRT units.
• A process was implemented to periodically review user access in RMS for sworn SAPD employees.
No recommendations were made for this follow-up audit.