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Three questions with a (former) cop: Andrew Dunbar 

David Bratton  | 22 February 2023  |  3 minute read

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For ten years he served the people first in Washington, DC and then Vancouver, WA. Now he converts “cop talk” into CAD and RMS technology solutions. Meet Andrew Dunbar, a former cop now working at Mark43.

One in ten Mark43 employees are former law enforcement or public safety professionals. Collectively they bring more than 400 years of specialized experience to the company, and we put that experience to work every day for our customers. In this series you’ll meet some of these exceptional Mark43 employees.

Andrew Dunbar spent 10 years working for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and the Vancouver, Washington Police Department, rising to the rank of detective. As part of the DC Civil Disturbance Rapid Response Team, he was deployed for the 2017 Presidential Inauguration.

Can you tell us about your role at Mark43?

I work on the Customer Success Team as a customer success manager. The best way to understand it is that I convert “cop talk” into our tech. How do we take that cop talk and understand how our software implementations can assist them? What is the workflow? What is it that the police or fire department needs to do and how does our CAD and RMS integrate into their workflow? We make sure that Mark43 technology is helping public safety agencies improve their operations and ultimately help them serve the community.  

Why Mark43? 

I started my career with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia in 2013. We were on a records management system that was archaic and Mark43 came in and drastically improved the officer’s ability to generate good, clear, concise and accurate reports. We always talk about manpower, about how many officers are available to handle call loads. In DC, Mark43 absolutely cut down on report writing time, which took up a major part of the police officer’s day. That freed us up to do more community checks, to be proactive, to be there for each other and for the community. When I saw that solution firsthand, and how technology could directly improve our ability to help people, I was hooked on Mark43.

I later transferred to the Vancouver, WA Police Department, and a few years later Mark43 won the records management system contract for Vancouver PD. What followed was another great implementation that directly improved how we could help the community. My fellow officers instantly recognized that Mark43 was leaps and bounds better than what they had previously used. Those two experiences where I saw how software transformed our ability to help people made me think that if I were to ever leave law enforcement and do something different, I would have to go to a mission-focused company that helps first responders.  

 

  

“When you throw something new into the mix for an officer, there is going to be some resistance. It is not a refusal to change, it is the fear that this change will no longer allow them to do their job effectively and get home safely.”

How do you think your experience as a detective informs how you serve our customers? 

Change management is a huge challenge for police officers whether it is a new training, technology, or policy. When I was a police officer I would go to my station house and do everything in a specific way. I felt that as long as I followed the same pattern, I’d be able to do my job effectively and correctly, and I’d be able to return home safely to my family. But when you throw something new into the mix for an officer, there is going to be some resistance. It is not a refusal to change, it is the fear that this change will no longer allow them to do their job effectively and get home safely.

Since I’ve been on the other side and internalized what it’s like to put on the uniform, I understand how our customers feel when an entirely new report writing system is introduced. It is a huge shakeup and it is intimidating, even when it’s a much better system. I communicate to them how this program is going to help them, how if they embrace it and go with me on this short journey then they’ll soon be getting their job done faster and more effectively. That they’ll have more officers to support them on their calls because they aren’t stuck with their own report writing. By working together and sharing their mindset, we can move forward together. And we can help more people. It’s why we all became police officers in the first place.

Mark43 works in partnership with more than 120 public safety agencies across the globe, providing them with new technologies that enable officers to spend more time in the field with the community.


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