Built on one rule: every petition has exactly one accountable officer at all times, and a clock that starts the moment it is registered.
A citizen brings a petition to the office. Someone registers it. From that instant it belongs to exactly one officer, it can only ever be handed downward through the chain of command, and a disposal deadline is running against it. The system's whole job is to make those three facts impossible to lose track of — so that a grievance can never quietly go missing in somebody's drawer, and nobody has to chase paper to find out where a case stands.
A petition is never "with the department" in general. At any moment, one named officer is answerable for it — and the system knows who.
Who may hand a case to whom follows the chain of command. An officer cannot pass a petition somewhere they have no authority over.
Every petition has a disposal deadline, and reminders escalate automatically as it approaches. Nobody has to keep a list.
A petition can be cancelled with a written reason, but never deleted. Every hand-off and every status change stays on the record, permanently.
A petition moves down this chain, or sideways within a level — never up it. This ordering is the backbone of the whole system, and it is checked every single time a case changes hands.
Commissioner
Sees every petition in the city, and every dashboard. Can assign to anyone below.
Deputy Commissioner
Responsible for a division. Sees and assigns the petitions within it.
Assistant Commissioner
Responsible for a jurisdiction — the group of stations inside a division.
Station Inspector
Sees the petitions they personally own. Investigates them, records progress, and attaches findings.
Internal Staff & Data Entry Operators
The intake desk. They register incoming petitions. They sit outside the chain of command and never own a case themselves.
System Administrator
Looks after the system itself — accounts, roles, the office structure, the deadline rules. Deliberately has no access to petition case files. They run the machine, not the cases.
These stages happen in order. Each one can only follow the one before it.
Registered
The intake desk records the petitioner's details and the complaint. The petition is given its own number — something like CBE-COP-2026-0000123 — handed to a first officer, and the disposal clock starts.
Assigned and transferred
The petition moves down the chain to the officer who will actually handle it. Every hand-off records who passed it, who received it, when, and why.
Under investigation
The owning officer works the case, updates its status as it progresses, and attaches evidence, scans and reports to the file.
Reminders escalate
As the deadline approaches, the system sends reminders on its own — first to the officer holding the case, then upward to their superiors if it continues to sit. No supervisor has to go looking.
Resolved and closed
The officer records the outcome and closes the petition. A closed case can be reopened if new information arrives. Cancelling one requires a written reason.
Every petition must be disposed of within a set window — thirty days by default. Different kinds of petitions can be given different windows. Whatever window applies is fixed the moment the petition is registered, so changing the rules later never moves the goalposts on a case that is already open.
| Status | What it means | Days remaining |
|---|---|---|
| Within time | Comfortably inside the disposal window | More than 10 |
| Approaching | Reminders are going out to the officer and upward | 1 – 10 |
| Overdue | Past the deadline, and escalated up the chain | 0 |
Each officer sees their own cases in these colours the moment they log in, and every supervisor sees the same picture for everyone beneath them.
| Role | Day-to-day work in the system |
|---|---|
| Data Entry Operator | Registers petitions as they arrive at the counter and hands each one to its first officer. |
| Station Inspector | Works the cases they own, records progress, attaches reports, and closes them out. |
| Assistant Commissioner | Distributes petitions to stations in their jurisdiction and watches for cases falling behind. |
| Deputy Commissioner | Oversees the division, steps in on escalations, and answers for the division's record. |
| Commissioner | Sees the whole city at a glance — what is on time, what is slipping, and who is holding it. |
| System Administrator | Creates accounts, sets the office structure and deadline rules. Never touches case files. |
Accounts are issued, not requested
Nobody can sign themselves up. Every account is created by an administrator and given a rank and a posting — which is what decides the cases that person is allowed to see.
Before the first petition can be registered, the administrator sets the department up once, in this order. Each step depends on the one above it.
Enter the office structure
The divisions, the jurisdictions within them, and the police stations within those. Officers cannot be posted anywhere until this exists.
Create the officers
Each account gets a rank and a posting — a division, a jurisdiction, or a station. That posting is what decides which petitions they will see.
Publish the petition form
Decide what the intake desk is asked to record. The form can be changed later, and old petitions keep the form they were registered under.
Set the deadlines
Choose the disposal window and the reminder days for each category of petition.
Register the first petition
The desk is open. The clock starts.