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    • Digital Policing – the journey towards change Author: David Robinson

      Published Jan 29 2018, 1:21 PM by Paul Jeffs

      We all know that the public safety community faces increasing challenges, doing more with less and tackling new kinds of crime. Technological transformation offers solutions that could significantly save time, improve efficiency and deliver benefits across a range of areas. However it is also true that when faced with transformational change many people and organisations are reluctant to move forward in a different direction from their traditional one. We know that change is inevitable, but it can also be disruptive.

      The word ‘Transformation’ is potentially an uncomfortable one, suggesting that everything we do is wrong and needs to change. The reality is of course that a change to digitally-enabled policing methods is already happening. But this is a journey and it is possible to take the first steps now with solutions that are future-proof and can deliver positive benefits today as you move forward.

      The Third Digital Policing Summit, convened by Cityforum, brought together chief officers, Police CIOs, technology vendors, and experts from the policy and business worlds to consider the opportunity and the challenge presented by this digital journey.

      The Summit was designed to foster debate and knowledge-sharing about the challenges of digital transformation including financial impact and cultural change.

      Crucially, although the audience acknowledged the challenges ahead, it also recognised that progress is being made and that successful transformation has started in forces around the country. There is a continuing need for greater consistency and for forces to build the right partnerships in order to deliver effective change, but the change is happening.

      I was very pleased to be a part of the debate and I am excited to offer you to opportunity to review the issues that were discussed and the conclusions reached by downloading a copy of “Enabling Change through Technology” the independent report published by Cityforum.

      Cityforum Report

      There is no doubt now that digital policing is an opportunity not a problem, and there is a positive attitude towards making the transformation a reality.

      I hope you will find the report informative.

      David Robinson

       

      David Robison is a Business Development Manager with Motorola Solutions

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    • Modern Policing – Going Beyond Voice Communications Author: Julian Foster

      Published Jan 12 2018, 2:00 PM by Paul Jeffs

      Julian Foster reports from the launch of the Motorola Solutions UK Innovation Centre – sharing perspectives from senior executives on technology being developed to support police forces in their mission to do more with less.

      Keeping people safe. Reducing crime. In simplistic terms, that’s what policing is all about. Traditionally, group-based voice communications have played a vital role in supporting officers to deliver on these two objectives. But the advent of LTE broadband opens up new possibilities to expand mission-critical communications beyond voice alone – to improve officer safety and optimise efficiencies pre, during, and post-incident.

      Police Incident

      A lot of research has been conducted around how much policing time is spent in these areas. Let’s look at how we’re applying technology across all 3 phases to support our customers in their digital transformation beyond voice communications.

      Before Incident – Proactive Policing
      Proactive policing is already happening today. Most police forces use a technique called hot-spot analysis to get an historical view of where crimes have taken place. But if you think of a hot-spot, the area that you need to patrol could be a very large “general” area. With police forces having very limited resources, we want to narrow down that patrolling area. This is where predictive analytics really comes into its own.

      It enables us to predict the location and timeframe when a specific type of crime is likely to occur. That’s very important, because if you think of a police force – there’s different skill-sets to solve different types of crimes. Predictive analytics enables forces to prioritise resource where it will be needed most.

      In a demo, Olatunde Williams showed how forces can mobilise information to the people who are going to carry out that patrol. Imagine you’re the Duty Inspector and you want to ensure that your patrols are focused in the right areas. If you can pinpoint a precise neighbourhood that you want to patrol – this has a massive impact on efficiency and ability to respond to an incident. If the analytics show that between 8am-4pm there’s typically a theft – you can allocate officers to that area in advance, to reduce response time, and most importantly – reduce the impact of an incident.

      During Incident – Helping officers become more effective in the field
      Experienced officers often build up a gut instinct that something isn’t quite right. Maybe an officer has noticed something about a car that has just driven by. The first thing they would do is turn their lights on and pull the vehicle over. As soon as the lights are on, the dashboard camera can be automatically activated and everything is time-stamped and logged, digitally.

      If you’re then approaching the vehicle, the officer needs to know that it’s safe. He can run a vehicle check by speaking into his handheld device. From here, he can not only learn about the vehicle itself, but can also run checks on the registered owner. If there’s any active cases, the officer can drill down to learn more. This is a concept of what’s possible by using alternative modes of interactivity.

      High Velocity Human Factors
      A customer of ours described the life of being a first responder as “hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of terror”.  First responders experience things that most of us can’t even imagine. The levels of stress they experience are extreme. Studying human behaviour during these moments is vitally important when developing technology to support officers in the field.

      For example, there’s a reason why the emergency button is on the top of a two-way radio. Intuitively, you can feel your way to it, by sliding your hand down the antenna. But as we covered earlier, you don’t have to press buttons to interact – we can use voice activation too. Voice activation will become increasingly important to support the notion of Eyes Up, Hands Free – where technology enables officers to be less distracted and more aware of their immediate vicinity.

      It’s a Two-Way Radio. But not as you know it
      If we can interact with technology using voice, it raises an interesting question. Do we need a screen at all? What if we got all the technology available in a Two-Way Radio, and transformed it into a wearable device like we see below? This isn’t a pipe-dream, it’s something we’re developing for officers in the field. The technology could also be implemented in the form of a vest – something which every police officer wears.

      A radio - but not as we know it...

      How does all this help an officer to be safe?
      Pretty much every TETRA radio on the market today – features sensors. The most common is the man-down sensor that detects if an officer is lying down and non-responsive. Sensors like that would be included in the wearable device. An automatic emergency alert would go out to all officers nearby – indicating that there’s a colleague who needs urgent assistance.

      With a connected-police officer there’d be sensors to detect when the gun is drawn, the Taser is pulled. There’d even be an integrated heart-rate sensor. Remember, radios have GPS so we always know where an officer is. With all of these different inputs, a context engine could detect if the officer has a high heart rate – and trigger an action. If an officer is in a dangerous situation and has needed to pull their Taser – an automatic sensor can switch-on the body-worn camera to start recording the incident, and logging everything digitally. The officer hasn’t had to enter any of this information – it’s all triggered, generated and stored automatically so contextual notes are available for chain of evidence.

      If an incident happens in the UK, you dial 999. Traditionally, the dispatcher gathers information, and then communicates that to available resources – usually via radio. When the incident is resolved, the paperwork begins. This is an area where we can improve efficiencies. We can integrate call taking and dispatch to mobilise the response quicker. In the area surrounding the incident, shot sensors can detect if a gun has been fired. The intelligence officer back at the station can then look at live CCTV images and combine that with images available from Body-Worn Cameras from responding officers to get a complete picture.

      Information Overload
      The potential is significant for sharing new levels of intelligence. But we have to mindful of not overwhelming an officer with too much information. We’ve been developing an interface that provides individual officers with the contextual information they need – nothing more, nothing less. This could include details of nearest colleagues on a map. The officer can easily create a group to communicate via PTT to those officers via any device. Digital photos and videos can be securely shared. White-boarding functionality can also be used for deeper collaboration during an incident.  

      At the end of the shift, all this information is stored in a digital vault. Notes, contextual information, video is all securely stored – with a robust chain of custody. 

      Julian Foster

      Julian Foster is Global Co-Lead for the Social Media Centre of Excellence at Motorola Solutions

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    • Top 6 Public Safety Videos of 2017

      Published Jan 05 2018, 8:24 PM by Paul Jeffs

      Following our blog on the Top 6 Think Public Safety Public posts of 2017, I’d like to share our Top 6 list of EMEA Public Safety YouTube English-language videos published in 2017.

      1 - Lowland Rescue Finds Missing Person - Lowland Rescue uses WAVE Push-to-Talk service from Motorola Solutions to coordinate a search and rescue.

       

      2 - WAVE™ Control Room Solution – WAVE Control Room Solution transforms control room operations by combining mission-critical security and availability with elastic capacity through Motorola Solutions’ private cloud, hosted in ESN data centres.

       

      3 - DIMETRA Express at Critical Communications Europe 2017 - Paul Wilson introduces the new DIMETRA Express - a fully integrated 'all-in-box' TETRA system that supports TETRA voice services, short data, and VOIP telephony. Paul explains how simple the system is to install - taking less than 15 minutes!

       

      4 - Welcome to Critical Communications Europe 2017 - Tunde Williams welcomes us to Critical Communications Europe 2017. With over 1000 Public Safety and Commercial visitors expected how are we meeting their challenges? How are we future-proofing TETRA? Why is our new DIMETRA Express solution so important?

       

      5 - Poppy Social Story: Honouring Those Who Keep Us Safe - Every day, Emergency Services personnel are using social media to inform the public and engage with the communities they serve. UK Police Twitter Award Winner, Sgt. Harry Tangye from Devon and Cornwall Police shares his top tips for building a loyal and engaged following on social media.

       

      6 - PMRExpo 2017 stand tour - by drone - With over 4000 visitors, this year's PMRExpo was a real buzz. In case you missed it, or didn't see it all - here's a tour of our stand.

       

      If you are receiving this blog post by email, the links to individual videos may be missing. You can access them in this YouTubePlaylist instead - Think Public Safety - Top 6 New Videos 2017

      I hope you enjoyed this round-up.

      Don’t forget, once you are registered for this blog community, you can comment on posts and subscribe to email alerts.

      Best wishes for the new year!

      Paul Jeffs

      Paul Jeffs is Public Safety Editorial Lead for Europe and Africa at Motorola Solutions.

      Paul is on LinkedIn

      Follow @MotSolsEMEA on Twitter and look out for #ThinkPublicSafety

       

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