By: Jacob Colley
An innovative piece of software hopes to free up valuable police resources and ensure officers can spend more time on the beat.
Cumbria Constabulary has announced a new partnership with Mark43, which develops and supplies law enforcement systems for more than 135 agencies throughout the US and Australia.
The software – which will cost the force £950,000 annually – will allow officers to easily pull up information on things like suspects and locations and will also enable them to do things such as update custody statutes and manage evidence on the go.
“The basic concept is that it’s going to be integrated, so you don’t have all that duplication that you have from different systems,” said Michelle Skeer, Cumbria’s Chief Constable.
“So it means our officers can be more efficient, more effective, which frees them up to spend more time in the communities and tackling crime and anti-social behaviour and be more visible in the communities.
“So for me, that’s a win-win, because actually, that’s what our communities are telling us all the time they want. They always want to see more police officers and staff out there in the community.
“So embracing this new technology – and it is innovative and it is transformational – means that we can actually make that back-office piece as slick as possible and as efficient as possible.
“The reason we invest in the technology is to allow us to deliver the best possible service for members of the public. That’s why we’re doing it.”
It’s not just about freeing up the time of officers.
“It pushes information to our officers rather than having to interrogate lots of different systems. And so it should make it a lot easier for our officers to do their job,” said the Chief Constable.
“But importantly, it actually frees up time as well, because actually our demand, the same as any other police force, is only going in one direction. It’s making sure we can future proof in how we deal with that demand to make sure we can be out there in communities. Deterring and preventing crime and anti-social behaviour.”
It also has the benefit of securing the information securely in the cloud.
The Chief Constable believes technology is key in the fight against crime.
“It’s essential,” she said. “Technology is part and parcel of a policing job and we’ve got to make sure that technology is user-friendly to allow us to do our job. “And that is what this is going to do. This collaboration between the constabulary and Mark43, maybe it will allow us to push the boundaries as far as we can push them to make sure we’ve utilised and made sure it’s as innovative as it can be to actually save time for the officers and staff, so it allows them to do their job better.
“It’s the whole enabling piece. Police officers have to do a lot of reports. They’ve got to put a lot of files in, they’ve got to interrogate systems to be able to do their job. This is making sure we’ve got the best tools for them so they can deliver in turn the best possible service to members of the community in Cumbria.”
How will this software work during an incident?
The key to understanding the software is to know how it will be used during an incident.
“If they’re going to an incident, it will immediately push up that the police have maybe been to that incident before, this is who may be at the address, these associates, that individual, are there any warning markers on that individual, such as weapons markers?” said Chief Constable Skeer.
“All those sorts of things will actually give a better indication for the officers, so they’re preparing as they’re en-route to that job.
“Like missing persons. Has that individual gone missing before, where have they turned up before, who do they associate with, what mobile phone do they utilise?“So it’s all about getting all that data together and making the best possible use of that data for public safety and making us as efficient and effective as we can be.”
Currently, officers would have to access multiple systems or contact the control room to access the same information that will soon be available at the tap of a finger on their smartphone.
Officer concerns
One of the reasons the software was chosen was around the feedback from officers about the current systems in place.
“One of the one of the complaints that I hear from officers here continually is that they have to double handle information,” said Peter McCall, Cumbria’s Police and Crime Commissioner.
“At a crime scene they might record stuff, either on the current mobile system they have or their notebook and then have to re-enter it again onto the computer system and that’s really frustrating for officers. I know ’cause they tell me that.
“But this system should be one entry only for that sort of information and ideally, in the long run, we would see that one entry translate into case files which make their way to court and if if we could get to the state where we only have to deal with that case file once that that would be Nirvana, to be honest.“I’m not suggesting that we’re there yet, but that’s where we need to be. In order to really streamline this system and and make our officers much more efficient, but also to give them a user-friendly experience.
“Because, as I say, if it’s user friendly, people will use it.”
What is the software?
“Mark43 is a cloud-native data platform which we are rolling out with Cumbria police and that basically means that we are going to help all of the different officers collect information at the scene of an incident or an emergency and help them to actually understand how to better approach the resolution of that,” said Matt Polega, co-founder of Mark43.
“Whether it’s an investigation, providing victim services and safeguarding, basically, we want to support them from a data capacity and technology capacity through the entire lifecycle of an incident.
“At the end of the day, this means that community members are going to see more police officers in the field, giving back some business and law enforcement and spending less of their time doing all the mixed trivia and report writing that comes with community safety.”
The easy-to-use software will be available to all officers on both Android and iPhone and will allow them to tap into a cloud-based database wherever they are.
It means officers no longer need to login to multiple systems with everything they need located in one place.
The software will also be regularly updated by Mark43, with all improvements part of the included package.
It is hoped that the software will be rolled out in Cumbria the next 18 months/two years.
Where did the idea for the software originate?
“Mark43 started almost exactly a decade ago. We were working very closely with the Massachusetts State Police to understand some of the technology needs that we had and quickly we realised that police technology wasn’t what you see on TV all the time, and we kind of ran off in our direction and started building some software to start making all the back office work that police officers go through all the time, a little bit easier, a little quicker and more efficient,” said Mr Polega.
“We want to make sure that officers can be back in the field and serving their communities and getting back to the business of community safety.”
Mark43 is in the process of hiring boots on the ground in the UK to better understand the needs of communities here.
They hope, in time, to roll this out to other UK police forces.
Original Story: https://cumbriacrack.com/2022/05/11/innovative-software-hopes-to-keep-cumbria-police-officers-on-streets-for-longer/
