Yesterday I hosted the PPM webinar, ‘Empowering Officers and Investigators with Real-Time Incident Management—Introducing Mobility Options for In-the-Field Data Capture & Retrieval.’ Back when we started working on our mobile applications and had moved into the test and release phase, I thought “wow, this is really cool and easy to use,” but it wasn’t until I started putting the presentation together for this webinar that I realized just how important this function is to security and investigative personnel.
To start, I needed to come up with some basics for the webinar such as “what’s the benefit?” The answer to that question easily became intelligence and efficiency.
Intelligence
From the intelligence aspect, access to real-time data is critical. I recall days in the field as a police officer having to call in to dispatch to ‘run’ a name. My goal was to get any Intel on the person or persons I was dealing with. Are they dangerous? Have they been involved in anything before? Etc. Back then, I would only receive back a coded radio description which I had to decipher. If it was the right person, and they were involved in previous incidents, I had to listen to it over the radio. I sure would have liked to have had that Intel in my hands. I can only imagine how advantageous it would have been to see a photo of the person or to actually see the incident history relating to that person and read any of the incident data. Real-time intelligence at work.
Well… we have that now with Perspective Mobile. Using one of many supported mobile devices, users can query their incident database to get immediate answers and intelligence. Because everything is accessed real-time, if you’re searching historical data and someone has entered relevant data 30 seconds earlier from another mobile device or a desktop in the office, you have immediate access to that Intel. This single benefit alone made me realize the sheer importance of the mobile function.
Efficiency
Second to intelligence is efficiency. Again, back to the ol’ police days (we ex-cops love to talk about the ol’ days and how we did it!), I remember my time to write incident reports was a dedicated block of time set for me. So, in the field, I would take all of my calls, make my notes and then anywhere from one hour to one week later, I would get those incidents into the system, depending on when my RWT (Reporting Writing Time) was set.
Wow… how archaic! First, I think of the Intel that was not immediately accessible. Names, addresses, histories, etc., from the calls I responded to were sitting in my notebook, not in the system. As a result, that very important Intel was not available to other officers who needed it. Similarly, the Intel I needed in the field may have been sitting in some other officer’s notebook waiting for the report to be done. The mere fact that Intel could be sitting in a notebook instead of being added to the system is concerning.
Then there was the down time. Blocks of RWT were usually 2-4 hours long with 2-4 officers (in a platoon of 12) in the office. With the ability to create new reports or add supplemental data to reports from the field, there’s no more time spent driving to the office for dedicated RWT. In addition, when we think of ‘proactive security,’ even the ability to have a security or patrol vehicle parked in a visible area (while reports are quickly entered) can be a deterrent.
Perspective Mobile, while really cool in function (I use an iPhone and iPad) and very easy to use, plays a very important role in security. Plain and simple—it is a solution that leads to intelligence and efficiency—at least compared to the ol’ days!
Click here to request the Webinar recording: ‘Empowering Officers and Investigators with Real-Time Incident Management—Introducing Mobility Options for In-the-Field Data Capture & Retrieval’.
—Brian McIlravey, CPP, Co-CEO
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