Author: Mariano Delle Donne

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

In late 2015, I wrote about how Crime Analysts across the country are becoming the secret weapons for law enforcement. Crime analyst work and their products, such as intelligence bulletins, help organize crime reduction responses and policing efforts.

In the article I described the must have tools for crime analysts to be successful in their role.

At that time, we did not yet have the powerful BulletinWizard by SmartForce™. We have learned a lot since then and because of our learning, here is a shorter and improved take on must have tools for crime analysts and their law enforcement agencies.

One – CAD and RMS
No change here. CAD and RMS provide a lot of the raw crime report data that is needed to understand crime trends. Enough said, this is table stakes.

Two – Law Enforcement Specific GIS
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) leverage location-based data to create actionable intelligence. In fact, GIS systems like Esri provide more than mapping and make for powerful analysis tools for crime analysts. Visually, on a map, GIS can fuse together crime data, prolific offenders, and parolees. Esri is the industry standard for GIS.

Three – Crime Analysis Software
Moved from number two to three. Crime analysis software can range from simple tools to very robust software packages with powerful query, visualization, and forecasting capabilities. GIS systems today contain sophisticated analytical tools including potential integrations with CAD and RMS, possibly replacing the need for a stand-alone crime analysis product.

Four – Agency Management System
Public safety responses to crime reduction initiatives must be organized, secure, targeted, and proactive. Most responses involve coordination and collaboration from multiple units and often occur during uncommitted time. A crime intelligence product has a deeper impact on crime reduction when assigned to the right units and implemented/utilized in an organized manner. To see the level of success possible see how the Grand Junction Police is getting results from proactive policing and their impressive results from a recent targeted operation that you can read about here.

Intelligence Tip:
Email is sometimes used to communicate with the field. You can see posts about the risks of email on this blog. The SmartForce™ Agency Management System compliments your RMS and CAD and is CJIS compliant.

Five – The BulletinWizard by SmartForce™
Crime analysts have too much on their hands to fight with desktop publishing software to create intelligence bulletins. The BulletinWizard by SmartForce ™ cuts down the time of creating bulletins in half, is easy to use, is cloud based, and CJIS compliant. Powerful features like secure group sharing and integration with other Crime Analyst products make it a winner with crime analysts.

 

About SmartForce™ by Adventos

SmartForce™ is the only CJIS compliant and mobile agency management system designed to drive current policing strategies.  SmartForce™ also provides a single platform for integrating and automating all law enforcement administrative processes outside of CAD and RMS.

For more information visit www.adventos.com and view a video demonstration of SmartForce™ today.

You can read the older post here.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

According to a recent study conducted by the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention, retail theft may be growing at a greater rate than most would guess.  It is estimated that there are 27 million shoplifters operating in the United States today – a number that breaks down to about one out of every 11 shoppers. The cost to the retail industry is approaching $50 billion per year according to a recent NRF Survey.

To impact the world of retail theft, store owners and loss prevention managers must provide key information to their law enforcement agency and other store owners that can help detect retail crime patterns, identify potential shoplifters, and inform of criminal MO’s. This requires an effective public/private partnership between the retail industry and law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, county, tribal, and local level.

BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft

The BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft helps curb retail theft and improve community safety by providing store owners and loss prevention managers a way to communicate crime related information within their desired retail networks, including and importantly, their local law enforcement agency.

The major benefit of the solution comes by way of the Retailer Crime Bulletin Board, a common bulletin board with secure group sharing functionality that makes the sharing of retail crime related information to their local law enforcement agency quick and more efficient.

With the BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft, you maintain superior visibility over:

• People who have attempted to steal, or those who you believe have stolen.
• The specific type of property, goods or other assets that were targeted and stolen.
• Check or credit card fraud.
• Information about any attempts made to identify these people.

As mentioned, it is also possible to use the solution to identify certain trends and patterns as they develop in real-time – many of which would have previously gone undiscovered. You can see repeat offenders and how often they target a location, or which “hot ticket” items are the most common theft targets so retailers can make better and more informed decisions on how to protect their property. Our retail partners will also be pleased to know that a direct connection with their local police department can be included in the cost of their subscription.

Law Enforcement: How to get started for FREE

This public private partnership is made possible by retailers and Adventos and is FREE to Law Enforcement.

To enroll in the program, email chris.arvayo@adventos.com or call 480-371-5956 with your name, title, and agency name.

Law Enforcement eligibility will be validated. Once validated you will be granted read-only access to the secure and CJIS compliant BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft so you can begin taking a pro-active approach to reducing retail theft and increasing your agency’s community oriented policing efforts.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

We are surrounded by change, in our work, the community, and even more organically in our changing seasons. As I write this, I am surrounded by the impressive fall season in Colorado, as the trees turn from green to all shades of yellow, red and orange. So, for a change I would like to share my story from a recent interview I did with Vince Menzione about what drives me, and in turn Adventos and SmartForce in our vision to help 1 billion people.

This is a guest blog post from Vince Menzione at Cloud Wave Partners, original article link here.  http://cloudwavepartners.net/blog/2017/7/4/6zin4zmq5vurxyjr6yctpq19jjuwyv

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

The Greenwood Village Police Department strives to provide consistent, first-rate police service. To meet this high bar, the department employs an outcome-based strategy that expands on traditional policing by proactively working toward better problem-solving and interventions through partnerships and community policing. Through this strategy, the department aims to prevent crime, fear of crime, and social disorder.

To implement this strategy, Greenwood Village has focused on improving all aspects of its operational communications, including real-time operational information sharing, shift briefings, and the management of major policing projects. Early on, it became clear that the use of email was hindering their policing strategy because it was an ineffective way to share information and was not able to drive the levels of organization, connectivity and accountability that were needed throughout the police department.

The email coordination model was neither repeatable nor scalable, and suffered from numerous limitations, including:

• Lack of a centralized communication solution to manage operations, shift briefings, information and intelligence sharing. Parts of the organization might sometimes be unaware of an ongoing operation even though there were static records of the calls in CAD and incident reports in RMS.
• No secure, centralized forum for coordination of multi-unit responses. Multiple units that should have been coordinated were duplicating efforts and tracking their results was challenging.
• Need for real-time visibility into current operations and projects. Command wanted the ability to monitor and adjust resources and strategies on the fly which was not possible through email.
• The organization was drowning in email which inhibited coordination between command and units.
• Nontargeted bulletins. Although they have long been a way to disseminate essential information, the department’s bulletins were not targeted, searchable or disseminated in a CJIS-compliant manner. Instead, bulletins were sent using a distribution list to all sworn employees.

The goal: Consistency and repeatability through a scalable solution

Providing the right people with the right software eliminated the limitations imposed by email. Using SmartForce™ as an agency management system, the Greenwood Village Police Department has achieved consistency and has been able to implement its policing strategies more effectively. By removing unwanted communication barriers and improving accountability, the department now enjoys the following benefits:

• Everyone starts the day with a common operational picture of department operations.
• Efforts are coordinated in real time.
• Communication and responses are actionable and role-based.
• Bulletins are targeted to the right people at the right time.
• Information is easily searchable in a CJIS-compliant manner, improving responsiveness.
• Efforts are focused. Units are self-directed and accountable.
• Immediate monitoring (and adjustment) via department leadership is possible.
• The department is mobile-enabled, so work can be done 24/7 from any location.

Results that speak for themselves

The Greenwood Village Police Department uses SmartForce™ Operations Discussions, a secure collaboration workspace for information and intelligence threads. This application helps the department organize communication between disparate units, track problem areas, and coordinate the appropriate resources. Here’s how it helped in the department’s response to a recent incident:

Police responded to a complaint of first-degree criminal trespass — a purse had been stolen from a vehicle. The on-scene investigation led to a possible suspect.

Within minutes, a detective created an operations discussion and added an image of the likely perpetrator to the discussion thread, directing patrol to be on the lookout for the suspect.  

Within two hours, patrol responded to a call regarding a suspicious person in the parking garage of a complex near where the purse had been stolen. Upon arrival, the officers apprehended an individual who was attempting to hide from the police. 

The suspect had several outstanding warrants, and the police had probable cause to charge the person with attempted burglary at that location.

With SmartForce™ Shift Briefings, the GVPD has a secure workspace for shift information and accountability tracking, allowing the department to track activities that require immediate follow-up. This application enables action items to be completed quickly and documented appropriately. So far, 99 out of 108 shift briefings have been completed with appropriate follow up.

Offering a secure project management space with workflows, SmartForce™ Assigned Problems allows the department to centrally manage and track intervention activities and projects for partnerships and community policing initiatives. To date, 101 out of 120 projects have been completed; the others are works in progress with clear goals and objectives.

One solution for many challenges

Most organizations are aware of their problem areas, hotspots and community concerns. They know what problems they face, and they know the appropriate response. But they often struggle with executing their strategy consistently and monitoring the results in a repeatable, scalable manner.

SmartForce™ Operations Discussions, Shift Briefings and Assigned Problems enable the creation of processes that are repeatable, scalable and free of common communication barriers. Departments can mold these processes to meet their own specific needs and then repeat those processes consistently, strengthening the foundation of high-quality policing.

“With the SmartForce platform, we’re able to connect our operations to the data we generate at levels we had only previously imagined,” said GVPD Chief John A. Jackson. “As we integrate additional SmartForce organizational options, we’re finding that using a single tool creates a virtual force-multiplier effect in the enhancement of our resource deployment strategies.”

After a response, whether it be to a crime, a community problem, or a partnership project, you want to be able to look back at the specific factors that contributed to your success or improvements that must be made, so you can obtain high quality results in the future. With SmartForce, you can do exactly that.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

A proactive approach to crime reduction requires the ability to track the results of proactive policing deployments.  This requires moving from the “old way” of silos to team coordination and real-time collaboration between patrol, command, crime analysts and investigators.  Done right, central coordination and real-time collaboration can have a profound impact on crime reduction results, improved strategies, and greater resource efficiency.

The Grand Junction, CO Police Department: A Mission in Collaboration

The Grand Junction Police Department (GJPD), has a vision for a new, 21st-century definition of excellence in policing – one where teamwork and partnerships and the appropriate use of technology is encouraged.

The GJPD teams begin their day by scanning a secure, CJIS compliant portal that assists them in being proactive during team member’s uncommitted time.  It is expected that all teams (from officers to command) use this portal as their central communication hub.  Because the department values information sharing and collaboration to implement proactive police strategies, officers know that mission-critical information is consumed and distributed through the portal.

In this use case, we see that the GJPD has identified a problem-area in the Horizon Drive corridor.  They start the project by using the Operations Discussion feature in SmartForce™.  The project owner creates a discussion and identifies the problems, specific locations, persons of interest and includes a detailed bulletin, created by the crime analyst, that documents all the criminal activity in the area.  Based on the entered discussion, Patrol, Criminal Investigations, and other specialty units have all the information to implement the strategy.

Everyone in the department – from patrol, to CID, specialty units, commanders and crime analysts  collaborate securely and in real-time on this problem area.  They understand what needs to be done and note self-initiated activities and information that are gathered during their non-committed time.  Centralized coordination and real-time collaboration allows for quick adjustments, improved officer safety and keeps teams engaged and focused on the project.  ALL proactive information gathered in the Horizon Drive corridor is captured seamlessly with SmartForce, with the integrated use of mobile devices to share critical information.  Results happen in days vs. weeks.  Transparency improves accountability and accelerates success.

In the end, this proactive approach to crime reduction contributed to several arrests in the area. Commanders review the activities and the Horizon Drive project is successfully closed. The results of the project showed that self-initiated activity increased by 75% during the project.

Results that speak for themselves:

75% increase in officer initiated activities.

When the operation begins, reported crimes increase because of arrests and then promptly decreases as a result of the successful project.

The time spent on the project was 120 hours and 20 minutes. There were 13 arrests, 51 building checks, 25 traffic stops, 6 FIR’s, 4 consensual contacts and 2 known offender checks.

All told, there were 34 different discussion threads opened that related to the Horizon Drive project.

None of this would have been possible if the Grand Junction Police Department was still stuck in the “tried but true” reactive policing approach of using calls for service, incident reporting, antiquated business processes (i.e., email) with information silos and static data that resulted in inadequate reporting and lack of accountability.

In short, the Grand Junction police have a strategy and plan for proactive policing that now works. Their effectiveness and success are amplified by the power of people and software.  They can now collaborate in real-time, learn and adjust with agility, based on actionable data, make informed decisions, and effectively allocate resources.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

On April 17^th, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for a return to proactive policing in a USA Today op-ed. But what does that mean to law enforcement? A proactive approach to crime reduction requires the ability to track what the results of proactive policing deployments are – moving from the “old way” of hierarchy and individual response to a transformation that involves team coordination and real-time collaboration between patrol, command, crime analysts and investigators. Done right, coordination and collaboration can have a profound impact on the efficiency of the organization providing better crime reduction results, improved deployment of resources, and greater job satisfaction across the department.

In this model, a patrol officer enters his or her daily shift and either “receives” a roll call pass on and/or shift briefing. In some departments, this consists of a physical book of information that they flip through to get up to speed on everything from the silly to the serious including mission critical intel and information critical to their safety. From there, equipment is picked up and the officer is “on duty”. The problem? The pass down is passive. Officers sit and get briefed. The problem with this type of shift briefing is the following: Information is not searchable, if there is follow up it is not tracked; Information that is handed out like bulletins, BOLO’s or Attempt to I.D Intelligence is not managed digitally for a quick reference. In a real-life scenario, what happens 48 hours later when an officer sees someone in that bulletin that they received on Monday? What if it got lost? Where can they go and search for it? Are they still looking for the bad guy in the bulletin? Maybe he was arrested. How does the officer know?  Moreover, it is a rearview mirror look at what happened while the incoming officer’s environment runs in real time – and there’s the gap.

Of course, email updates are sent out; but, these too, are passive and easy to miss (especially when email is not targeted and related to an officer’s role). This ultimately puts the officer in a position where he or she is ill-equipped to face the specific dangers of the day, indefinitely delaying mission-critical information, and ultimately, making it more difficult to bring cases to a close and make it home safely at the end of the day.

Proactive Policing: Building the Bridge

In contrast, by using technology as a foundation for a more proactive approach to policing, officers will have the ability to “preload” their shift with everything they need to hit the ground running. From their mobile device they now have access to an officer safety alert via a mobile device as real time information is available. Even if nobody is physically available to pass down information, they still have it – information is being pushed out in real-time, even while other officers are still in the field. Solutions like SmartForce™ allow officers to stay-up-to-date and to push out updates of their own, making sure that if something important happens EVERYONE who needs to know about it DOES – often in seconds.

Officers are constantly connected not just to other patrol members but to crime analysts, commanding officers and investigators. All of this leads to increased collaboration, more efficient reporting and ultimately the most important benefit of all – crime REDUCTION and improved public safety.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

Many people don’t realize that the true path to crime reduction doesn’t rest solely with solving crimes – instead, it’s with preventing crime altogether. Many modern-day police departments emphasize a proactive approach to the work they do on a daily basis–sadly this is sometimes easier said than done.

The Difficult Path to Proactive Policing

Many departments struggle to stay coordinated while generating a proactive response to crimes and similar issues. Why? They don’t have the resources, the manpower or the tools required of such an important task for several reasons:

• Patrol officers are often frustrated by the administrative work outside of calls for service. There are no quick and easy ways to report their activities effectively and efficiently during “uncommitted” time to their command staff. They are also frustrated with the volume and frequency of crime bulletins: most of the time they are not targeted. Bulletins are sent to everyone in an agency instead of the audience that it was intended for and lack a standard format.
• Command is frustrated by how to digest incomplete, inconsistent, and/or voluminous paper data into effective strategies.  They want to see real-time information and they want it NOW; they need it to report back to other members of command staff and the community. However, they often cannot because they lack the necessary actionable data required to see which strategies and responses generate the best results.
• Crime Analysts often feel like their role is downplayed, leaving them with a sense that they’re unappreciated. They’re also frustrated, as their crime analysis service and products go unused.
• Investigators lack the secure collaborative workspaces, document management, and case management tools needed to coordinate their efforts involving long-term complex investigations, involving multiple victims, multiple suspects and pieces of evidence.

All of this doesn’t just lead to work duplication and redundancy – it leads to a lack of coordination, and in-effective use of resources. This affects the morale of the department and can negatively impact the relationship with the communities they serve.

At Adventos, we believe in a world where these silos are shattered. We are creating a world for (and with) public safety organizations where collaboration is effortless and instant. A world where the right data is in front of the right people at exactly the right time- making sure all involved have what they need to keep us safe from harm. With every product, we release, this is our goal and we work tirelessly to achieve it.

In the next post, you will learn how SmartForce™ delivers a means to relieve the pain points stated above and ultimately, helps make communities safer and stronger.