Content provided by ForceMetrics
Our world today is so overrun by “data” that it has become the buzzword of the century. But what is data anyway and what does it mean to law enforcement? When we think of data, we may find ourselves envisioning endless rows of information without any clear context. To bring meaning to it requires analysis, interpretation and the luxury of time. And if there is any field that does not have the luxury of time, it’s law enforcement.
First responders, in particular, have the complete opposite of this luxury, making “data,” in effect, useless. When lives are on the line and the speed of response is critical, data just doesn’t play a role. What a responder does need, however, is an understanding of the situation they’re walking into. They need meaningful information delivered quickly and concisely for rapid situational awareness to enable the most informed decisions and the safest response for all parties involved.
Public safety systems today simply don’t facilitate this. With awareness and understanding unattainable, policing has become reactive for all team members, and the safety of all parties suffers.
FROM UNUSED DATA TO ACCESSIBLE INFORMATION
In every police department across the country, every second of the day, data is documented. The greatest intelligence report of a community is the collective of 911 calls, police reports and other community data that a department takes in. Yet with all of this data and all of the systems to collect and return it, somehow none of them talk to each other, they’re not quickly accessible and none of them make it meaningful.
Anyone in law enforcement can attest that the more information you have going into a situation, the better the outcome will be. This standard applies to everyday calls for service, high-profile investigations and even walking into the next CompStat meeting. So why is the information still so challenging to obtain?
As former law enforcement professionals who both saw and felt these challenges firsthand, the founders of ForceMetrics created a platform to address them. Capturing existing data across siloed, legacy systems, ForceMetrics brings together critical information in a way that provides an often-missing piece: context to make the data meaningful and actionable.
ForceMetrics isn’t aiming to be the most high-tech intelligence platform in the law enforcement industry. Instead, the company’s goal is to reduce complexity to increase rapid understanding – easing the burden of searching for information across multiple systems and the friction of combing through the lengthy reports and noncontextualized data typically returned.
MAKING YOUR INFORMATION MEANINGFUL
ForceMetrics combines existing data from police reports, 911 call notes, jail data and more into one easily searchable location where you can follow your hunches and achieve rapid situational awareness.
“Our focus is on presenting the essence of each situation quickly and clearly, allowing officers to grasp the critical aspects without getting lost in the details. We highlight key insights and safety factors, making it easy to skim through the data and understand the root of a situation,” explained Andre McGregor, ForceMetrics founder and CEO.
With every search, users can further narrow down information, adding keywords, time frames, types of events and more. ForceMetrics helps users digest results quickly through its combination of automatic call classification, report summarization and safety signal features. A mapping feature also aids in visualizing patterns and enhancing the understanding of area-specific trends.
Beyond meaningful, actionable information, officers can also expect these specific outcomes using ForceMetrics:
1. Simplicity and ease of use – ForceMetrics users are greeted with a single search bar that’s as easy to use as any internet search engine. Your search doesn’t have to be exact either, as ForceMetrics can find results with misspellings, partial addresses, license plates or phone numbers, keywords, social media handles, location radiuses and more.
2. Shared understanding – ForceMetrics is designed for more than just first responders, as information can be shared with others within an agency and beyond. All team members involved in public safety can access a clear snapshot of important information, ensuring everyone from investigators to district attorneys is on the same page. Community stakeholders can also be looped in to help foster partnerships and implement diversion programs based on measurable information.
3. Increased safety – The more information an officer has before entering a situation, the better. Patterns related to specific individuals, like weapons possession or mental health concerns, can be easily identified through ForceMetrics’ safety signal system, giving officers insight into how they can identify risks and ensure their own safety and that of others. Quick access to this information can help reduce time on scene and ensures officers are fully informed before responding to a call.
FORCEMETRICS IN ACTION
The driving factor behind creating ForceMetrics wasn’t simply to provide a way for officers to easily access information – it’s also how the information is used and what patterns can be uncovered, ultimately leading to better police responses, that really make the difference.
The information compiled in ForceMetrics can be filtered in myriad ways and aids in situational awareness at any level – from an individual encounter to larger community trends and challenges. For example, departments looking to address overdoses can tell exactly where Narcan has been administered in their jurisdiction with just a few clicks. High-level views of top offenses can be displayed on a map or officers can look at the nature of their own interactions within the community.
“I can actually say we can look for the sentiment of domestic violence, and not just where it has been reported as such,” added McGregor. “Oftentimes that noise complaint or barking dog could be related to a couple that hasn’t been arrested for domestic violence, but it’s the underpinnings of what could be an unfortunate outcome later.”
Officers at the Greensboro Police Department (GPD) in Greensboro, North Carolina have seen firsthand how ForceMetrics can save time while enabling a more informed police response. In one situation, an investigator spent 17 hours searching through data related to a homicide. When ForceMetrics was introduced to the detective, he found what he was looking for in seven seconds.
GPD, along with several other agencies, also focuses on using ForceMetrics to determine the best resources for citizens in need. By identifying the 20 individuals they most commonly interact with in the city, they’ve been able to develop plans for better service. In many cases, this includes involving co-responders who provide mental health services or connecting offenders with diversion and deflection programs.
A VISION OF SAFETY WITH GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Feedback from police departments across the country is what has helped ForceMetrics to grow into the platform it is today. Between their direct law enforcement experience and insights from early agency partners, the ForceMetrics team identified exactly where there were gaps in law enforcement data systems in need of addressing.
“What I kept hearing was that Silicon Valley is giving departments the hardware, the drones, the license plate readers, the TASERS – and they collect a lot of data in their CAD or RMS systems, but they don’t get the insights on that data like the public thinks they do,” McGregor said.
Underutilized data is leaving communities in jeopardy, as officers and dispatchers can’t get the information they need in the most critical moments. ForceMetrics is working to address this core need, making the information necessary for informed response and safer outcomes readily available to the first responders out there serving our communities.
Now in use by over a dozen cities across five states, ForceMetrics has helped officers respond more appropriately to calls for service in countless ways.
The best feedback we have received from responders in the field: “As simple as ForceMetrics is, this is earth-shattering technology we should have had 15 years ago.”
Visit ForceMetrics for more information.