By partnering with the nonprofit National Police Foundation, a law enforcement data platform is aiming to make it easier for officers to share and learn from each other’s stories of narrowly avoiding death or serious injury on duty.

Mark43, a New York-based company that sells data-management software to law enforcement agencies, announced the partnership Oct. 8. The company will offer a free update that integrates “near-miss” reporting into the existing records management systems of its customers, allowing officers to submit anonymous data to the foundation’s Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) Near Miss database with the click of a button.

The Near Miss initiative isn’t new — it has recorded 156 incidents since its inception in 2014, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services — but the foundation expects its partnership with Mark43 to improve the quality of the data and make it easier to submit.

Jim Burch, the foundation’s executive vice president, said Near Miss used to require a long questionnaire based on what information was needed to assess what went wrong in each incident. But in practice, the form was too long. Burch said the foundation pared it down in recent years and implemented a mobile app, but even six minutes was too much time for officers who, after a near-miss incident, had to rush to their next call. By the end of their shift or the next day, many officers couldn’t perfectly remember exact details, leading to fewer and less-complete reports.

Now, all officers need to do is check a single box while filling out their logs every day to flag that report for LEO Near Miss, indicating it contains data on a near-miss incident.

“This is a tremendous step forward in terms of ease-of-use and the quality of the data, because now, with the agencies’ cooperation and permission, we can get access to multiple fields in that incident report,” Burch said. “So we can get access to data that we probably weren’t even trying to collect initially, but could be very valuable in terms of understanding what occurred.”

An analysis of these reports is available at PoliceOne.com.

Mark43 CEO Scott Crouch said Oct. 19 that the free update will be available to current law enforcement clients shortly, giving them and the foundation immediate, searchable access to flagged reports.

“A large part of our platform is making officers more efficient, and the other part is making sure that we can transport data really fast to any user … and say, ‘Hey, here’s something you need to be aware of in a situation that’s going on, this could potentially impact how you deal with it,’” he said. “We view this Near Miss stuff along the same lines as helping police departments improve the safety of their people.”

Mark43 counts more than 60 public law enforcement agencies of various sizes as customers, according to news releases.

Burch said roughly a dozen departments want to implement LEO Near Miss at the organization level, and more than 400 officers representing 296 local, state and federal agencies have subscribed to receive reports from the database. It averages about 30 near-miss reports a year, mostly associated with stops for traffic violations, arrest warrants and suspicious persons.

He added that similar close-call reporting systems that have been in place for years in fields of transportation and fire safety.

“It helps us make a giant leap forward in building a culture of safety within law enforcement. … How do we do what aviation has done, some transportation sectors have done, and learn from the mistakes, or almost-mistakes, that were made, as well as the factors that prevented a tragedy?” Burch said. “I’m not suggesting we’re the last to catch up here, but we’re certainly not as far ahead as other sectors, so this moves us forward to an incredible degree.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As protecting our nation’s law enforcement officers remains paramount, the National Police Foundation and Mark43 are announcing a new partnership in support of the Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) Near Miss initiative. The new partnership will help officers and agencies more easily and efficiently share “near misses” – situations where officers were almost seriously injured or killed. This partnership will improve safety for officers who experience near misses – a common occurrence within law enforcement, where officers put their lives on the line every day.

Near misses are usually very similar in characteristics to situations in which law enforcement officers were seriously injured or killed, so increasing the systematic reporting and analysis of these events will enable law enforcement to more proactively identify risks to officer safety and take the necessary action to prevent tragedy.

Through the partnership, Mark43 will now offer its customers the ability to seamlessly integrate near-miss reporting into their existing records management system (RMS) to enable officers and supervisors to, at the simple click of a button, automatically submit anonymized data to the LEO Near Miss reporting system (www.LEOnearmiss.org). This efficiency ensures that data critical to improving officer safety is systematically reported, captured, and analyzed, while also acknowledging the multitude of competing priorities and time constraints our officers face on a daily basis. The Mark43 integration also ensures that each participating agency has access to real-time data on the risks its officers are encountering, bolstering the agency’s capability to quickly and proactively address emerging threats to officer safety.

“This outstanding partnership will make the LEO Near Miss initiative far more effective and will allow us to make significant gains in officer safety by improving participation and reporting,” said Chief Jim Bueermann (Ret.), President of the National Police Foundation. Chief Richard Myers (Ret.), Executive Director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, notes, “We applaud this new officer safety partnership that will create lessons learned from lessons that are ordinarily only observed. This development will support continuous improvement in policing – something we must embrace and commit to in order to continue to advance policing, protect our officers, and serve our community members.”

“We are continuously innovating our technology to best meet the needs of the brave men and women who serve and protect us every day,” said Scott Crouch, Mark43 Co-Founder and CEO. “It was a privilege for our team to work alongside the National Police Foundation to develop this integration. With a simplified near-miss reporting process, officers will be able to help prevent future incidents without ever leaving the Mark43 platform.”

The Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) Near Miss Reporting System is managed by the National Police Foundation, with funding support from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice, in partnership with eight other law enforcement organizations like Below 100, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. For more information about how your agency can become involved in this critical officer safety initiative, please visit www.LEOnearmiss.org. Attendees at the IACP Annual Conference & Expo (October 6-9) in Orlando, Florida can also visit Mark43’s booth #1829 to learn more.

NEW YORK, NY—Mark43, the leading cloud-based public safety software platform, today announced that Steve Salberta, former Vice President of Strategic Finance at Rackspace Enterprise, has joined the Mark43 team as Chief Financial Officer. A seasoned expert in all aspects of strategic finance, management and execution, as CFO, Salberta will help Mark43 usher in a new phase of growth while advancing its mission to bring public safety technology into the 21st century.

By working closely with CEO Scott Crouch and senior leadership teams, Salberta will oversee global strategic and financial planning initiatives. With a growing leadership team and expanding client base, Mark43 will chart its own path to overhaul industry standards with modernized public safety technology.

Salberta brings critical experience from scaling cloud-services company Rackspace, where he led finance teams to drive revenue growth from $600 million to $2 billion while generating an increase in free cash flow by five times. Under Salberta’s leadership, Mark43 will continue to develop as a nimble, independent technology company.

“We are very excited that Steve is joining the Mark43 team,” said Scott Crouch, Co-Founder & CEO at Mark43. “His demonstrated financial leadership across the cloud technology space will help us continue to scale rapidly as we bring on new public safety agencies from around the world.”

“Mark43 has a tremendous opportunity to transform the public safety software market and make a real difference on this planet,” said Steve Salberta, CFO of Mark43. “It’s always exciting to be a part of a high-growth technology company, but even more so when what we’re building has a positive impact on the lives of our first responders and our communities.”

NEW YORK, NY — Mark43, the leading cloud-based public safety software company, today announced that it will be integrating with RapidSOS to provide emergency communications centers with Next Generation 911 (NG911) call location tracking technology.

More than 80% of 911 calls nationwide are made on cell phones, according to the National Emergency Number Association. However, most public safety agencies still rely on approximate locations from cell tower triangulation even when smartphone devices can provide exact GPS locations. Using the RapidSOS NG911 Clearinghouse, Mark43’s Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) will display precise location data for wireless callers, enabling call takers, dispatchers, and first responders to pinpoint the scene of an incident in real time.

Mark43 CAD was purpose-built in the cloud and designed for quick and cost-effective interoperability with third-party systems and devices. The RapidSOS integration utilizes Mark43’s open API framework to seamlessly activate an additional layer of location data within the CAD’s existing map feature. Enhanced caller location data will increase situational awareness of active events, supplementing carrier-provided ALI data, agency-provided GIS and AVL information, as well as Google-integrated street and satellite views.

Soon, this integration will be readily available to any Mark43 CAD customer. Mark43 is dedicated to continuously incorporating emerging technologies into its platform in order to ensure that first responders are using the best and newest possible tools to keep communities safe. In the future, it may be possible to further integrate today’s mobile technologies to streamline emergency communication and police services. One example of upcoming development plans is to leverage additional RapidSOS data, such as local traffic information from Waze.

“In order to make our communities safer, we need to utilize all of today’s technological offerings to fill the gaps that have existed in public safety for far too long,” said Scott Crouch, CEO & Co-Founder of Mark43. “Our first responders can save thousands of lives by using the real-time location tracking that pizza delivery and ride-sharing services have had access to for years. By integrating the RapidSOS NG911 Clearinghouse into Mark43 CAD, we will be delivering the precise location data that first responders need and deserve.”

“We look forward to providing departments across the country with the technology needed to bring our existing emergency communications infrastructure into the 21st century,” stated RapidSOS General Manager of Public Safety Jeff Robertson. “Together with Mark43, we’re empowering our first responders with rich data that facilitates crucial speed and efficiency in emergency situations.”