Category: SmartForce®

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.

David Bibiloni
Regional Implementation Manager

At Adventos, we’re big believers in the idea that tracking Response to Resistance incident reduces violence. However, you will be surprised to hear that one of the most under-reported features of our Response to Resistance application is the ability to report instances when the use of force was justified, but instead, it was avoided by officers.

We are not alone on this belief. Please take a look at this article posted by PoliceOne.

This is a consistent vision of SmartForce™ line of products since 2015. In fact, we are in the forefront of Agency Management System providing state of art tools where Police departments across the nation can use hard data to showcase the outstanding job that officers are performing day to day in our communities to keep us all safe, and not only as a way to highlight the negatives that we sometimes see highlighted in the media.

We believe Use of Force and other similar common terms/ products are outdated on terms not only of functionality but also in terms of negative connotations for both the law enforcement agencies, as well as, the communities they serve.

To learn more about our current and expanding features, developed in collaboration with our Law enforcement customer partners, visit our site at www.adventos.com.

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

Checking in.

The other day, my five-year-old son asked me if SmartForce^TM (our Agency Management System or AMS) was being used all around the world-where he couldn’t see any different picture. What he understands is that we help police officers keep people safe, and catch the “bad guys”. What I am reminded of is that we have the opportunity and the responsibility to empower our public safety agencies to drive change in an ever-changing world.

You face serious challenges, and some that didn’t exist even 5 or 10 years ago. Much is being asked of you, and I see you get up each day and try to make your community a better place. Why you do it is clear. You are warriors, and peace keepers, guardians and goliaths essential to the communities you serve. It takes grit, courage, a love of country and time and time again I see a compassion for our fellow man.

Checking in.

Why We Do It is for all of the reasons above and because we choose to play an important role in helping one billion people with improved public safety. We only do this by helping and equipping YOU; the nearly one million police officers (the men and women in blue), with the power of people and software.

You need software solutions that are democratic and social, that allow you to respond faster than ever before, that accelerate the speed at which information flows and the rate at which you’re able to connect.

We want to positively impact the mothers, the fathers, the children, the teachers and EVERYONE in between so that they can enjoy the peace-of-mind that only comes with knowing that their communities are safe and are being taken care of.

But above all else, we do what we do because of our vision. We see a world that is increasingly safe, where you have exactly what you need, when you need it – and we want to help us all get there.

We do this now via solutions like SmartForce ™, which allows law enforcement agencies around the globe search through and access critical information faster, share it in a secure and targeted way, streamline workflows and facilitate collaboration – all in one fell swoop.

Checking in.

Sometimes it’s the voice of a five-year-old that reminds us of our bigger purpose, the roles we all play, and why we do it.

Doug Owens
Director of Implementation

Fire departments, like their law enforcement brothers and sisters, are facing a larger amount of data than ever before. While technology has certainly brought a wide range of benefits into our lives, it’s also complicated things to a dramatic degree. Department functions are growing in scope, making them more difficult to manage accurately and efficiently. Different areas within an organization are starting to exist in silos, which isn’t doing anyone – let alone the communities they serve – any good.

Enter: SmartFire ™. Like the SmartForce ™ Agency Management System (AMS), SmartFire ™ is designed to help fire departments manage their operations better than ever before with intelligence-led decision making, the likes of which many have never seen.

Alerts

As a forward-thinking, mobile-friendly solution, SmartFire ™ and SmartForce™ get mission-critical updates into the hands of the people who need it the most – when they need it the most – and wherever they happen to be.

Shift Briefings

Along the same lines, SmartFire™ can be hugely beneficial in terms of shift briefings, helping to make sure everyone has access to the actionable information they need in the field at all times. This is particular critical in terms of the life-and-death situations that fire fighters face every day.

Document Management

Mission-critical documents aren’t doing anybody any good if they take hours to find. Email is great – to an extent, but wading through gigabytes of messages to find the right document wastes precious time and resources. Thanks to SmartFire™, your fire department doesn’t have to worry about this ever again.

Training and Compliance Management

Continuing education is hugely important in terms of fire department success and now, thanks to SmartFire™, managing both training and compliance in-house has never been easier.

Accountability Features and Reporting

SmartFire™ offers better management and reporting to guarantee not only more procedural justice transparency, but also a more efficient way to offer reporting to command staff, local government officials, the general public and even the media in the communities being served.

At its core, SmartFire ™ (like SmartForce ™) is designed to help fire departments work smarter, not harder, putting them in the best possible position to protect, serve and collaborate with the communities they operate in like never before. To find out more about SmartFire by Adventos™ , please contact Adventos today.

Doug Owens
Director of Implementation

At Adventos, we understand the types of challenges that law enforcement agencies around the country are facing in today’s modern climate. The role of police officers has never been more important, yet at the same time it has perhaps never been under more scrutiny. That’s why we’ve designed the entire SmartForce™ suite of products from the ground up with these factors in mind, putting the tools these hardworking men and women need well within reach – wherever they happen to be and whenever they happen to need it.

SmartForce™ was founded on the principles of transparency, accountability and accessibility – three of the most important pillars when it comes to determining when, where and how use of force is appropriate. We call it “Response to Resistance” and it’s something that both we and our law enforcement agency partners are excited about.

We’ve also released a series of YouTube videos designed to help you get even more out of your deployment. You can learn how to create a Response to Resistance report in SmartForce™, learn more about the capabilities built into the Response to Resistance supervisor section, get general tips about making the most of Response to Resistance and more.

To learn more about the current and expanding features of SmartForce™ Agency Management Solution (AMS) developed in collaboration with our customer and Agency partners, please visit our Website at www.adventos.com.

Brian Mc Grew
VP of Education

Even though we have faster computers and more information than ever, you would think that law enforcement agencies would have more speed and success at reducing crime.  Unfortunately, this is not the case in many U.S. cities as crime and threats continue to climb.  Some reasons are:

• Increasing numbers of text, photo, and video data bases that are not integrated with a common search feature
• Poor search engines that can’t search inside pdf documents or text narratives
• Lack a comprehensive system for communicating, tracking, reporting, or assessing crime reduction efforts. Most LE agencies only have systems for calls for service, reporting crimes, and case management
• No system for multi-jurisdictional collaboration and sharing of crime data.

To reduce crime in today’s environment of exponential increases in text, photo, and video data as well as increased population to officer ratios, it requires speed to search and access data, speed in providing direction to patrol on where crimes are happening, and ease of assessing activity and results.  Without speed, crime patterns are not addressed early enough to disrupt or stop the patterns and crime continues to rise.

The Technology Solution

Only invest in technology that has the capability to solve 2 or more of the challenges listed above so you can add more speed into your agency.  No longer can you or your agency get a return on investment of buying another software program that operates in a silo and only solves 1 problem.  We must kill more than one bird with a stone and acquire software you can continue to grow into.

 If you are trying to align and direct patrol with real-time information and intelligence for improved crime reduction, you may want to check out the new features of the SmartForce™ Agency Management System from Adventos.  SmartForce™ provides a force-multiplier system for communicating, tracking, reporting, and assessing crime reduction efforts that can also share crime data with neighboring LE agencies.  Click here to check out a short video of the SmartForce™ crime reduction features or click here to read a PoliceOne article on how the Port St. Lucie Police Department uses SmartForce™ to reduce property crimes by 20+% year over year.

 

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

If you had to make a list of all the controversial topics in the world of law enforcement, the use of force would be right at the top. This has only intensified in recent years as the term itself, along with what is acceptable when employed, are constantly evolving.

At Adventos, we have made an effort to incorporate the concepts of “Response to Resistance” into our entire SmartForce™ suite of products because we understand that every interaction our officers have with the public could be scrutinized. This is true regarding internal teams as well as external agents such as the media. Therefore, law enforcement agencies across the nation are fast adopting the principles we set on “Response to Resistance” which are:

• Transparency
• Accountability
• Accessibility

Transparency

Internal procedures and checkpoints have been increased in the last few years in all law enforcement agencies in the United States. There is understandably a sense that law enforcement agencies must do everything in their power to increase visibility of what offices are doing in our communities and be ready to provide all level of details almost instantly.

Accountability

The core functionality of SmartForce™ allows for each officer to be held truly accountable for every action they take, both good and bad — the way it should be. This means they have to adhere to appropriately stringent polices when it comes to “Response to Resistance.” As a result, agencies must provide a reliable, effective way for officers to track each interaction and record the results. The idea is to gather real-time or almost real-time information, and analyze the data to improve future outcomes.

SmartForce™ provides a new avenue for law enforcement agencies to do precisely that on a daily basis. Moreover, this information can and should be used to drive better, more effective, and more holistic training opportunities moving forward.

Accessibility

Make no mistake: We now live in a mobile world. The days of waiting to get back to HQ to file reports are now gone. Internal Supervisors, as well as the public, expect information to be available almost instantly. At Adventos, we provide immediate access to our “Response to Resistance” application from anywhere there is an Internet connection. This includes MDC’s, Tablets and Smart Phones.

All these principles must be incorporated into any solution that is attempting to record and analyze interactions. What we learn from “Response to Resistance” now will have an enormous the impact on officers and the communities they serve.

We at Adventos are proud to provide the only such solution in the market today that does all of this and more. We designed SmartForce™ and our “Response to Resistance” suite using feedback from law enforcement agencies across the nation to make sure we facilitate tracking in the most effective, user-friendly and fair way possible. The ultimate goal is to be able to learn from each interaction, analyze the individual circumstances of each case, and improve the outcome for both officers as well as suspects.

To learn more about the current and expanding features of SmartForce™ Agency Management Solution (AMS) developed in collaboration with our customer and Agency partners, please visit our Website at www.adventos.com.