21st Century Public Safety: The Power of Technology in Public Service

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

powerOfTechnologyInPublicService

At Adventos, we couldn’t help but notice that there are many dramatic – and important – shifts that are happening in public safety. These are changes both in terms of how work is done and the impact that it is having on our communities.

Public Safety Organizations are becoming increasingly transparent to the community, allowing them to be more flexible in terms of the invaluable services and attention they provide. At the same time, work is increasingly virtual – it’s occurring anywhere, at any time, thanks to the power of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Adventos believes deeply in helping not one thousand people, not one million people, but one billion people through improved public safety and by harnessing both the power of people and the power of software at the exact same time. This is a large part of the reason why we believe that human collaboration through technology isn’t just important today, but will grow even more pressing in the not-too-distant future.

The Shape of Things to Come

As more and more millennials enter the public safety workforce, talent will need to engage on an aligned purpose – no longer just on hierarchy. Social and external collaborations are poised to make leadership more horizontal, shared and (most importantly) collective. Boundary-less work partnerships need to exist and networks will augment capabilities and redefine how agencies achieve success in crime reduction.

Just as importantly, analytics, algorithms, big data and artificial intelligence will create new work at the intersection between humans and automation. Menial tasks previously performed by humans will be abolished, freeing up their valuable time so that they can do more of what they do best – keeping our communities as safe as possible.

At Adventos, this is the future we believe in and it is the one that we are working hard to help create in any way that we can.

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Human Trafficking and Major Crimes: Microsoft and SmartForce™ by Adventos

Chris Arvayo
Customer Success Manager | Product

microsoftAndSmartForce

Human trafficking, child exploitation, and similar major crimes are unfortunately all too common in the modern era. According to the Polaris project, the national human trafficking hotline has received more than 22,191 reports of sex trafficking cases in the United States since 2007 alone. It is estimated that as many as one in six endangered runaways likely become sex trafficking victims. Globally, there are approximately 4.5 million people trapped in these types of situations, according to the International Labour Organization.

As industry leaders, Adventos takes our commitment to law enforcement and public safety agencies around the country and the communities they serve very seriously. Therefore we’re so pleased to announce that, as a result of our partnership with Microsoft, Adventos is rolling out a Major Crimes Investigation Management System that will integrate effortlessly into our existing SmartForce™ Solution.

Introducing: The Major Crimes Investigation Management System

This system was built in collaboration with investigators across the country. This will help agencies manage, organize and conduct complex investigations such as human trafficking, child exploitation, homicide and organized crime more efficiently. Adventos designed, built and deployed the system, which is now available for nationwide use by Law Enforcement, to guarantee the maximum positive impact to public safety. The system will be hosted as part of the Microsoft Azure Government Cloud, which is CJIS compliant, allowing it to grow organically via their vast networking capabilities. This will instantly link federal, state, local, tribal, and campus law enforcement agencies in a powerful and secure way.

Managing tips and leads in a major investigation can be a challenging process.  Law enforcement agencies commonly use web based software to intake tips from the public.  Unfortunately, utilizing a non-CJIS compliant digital workspace to manage tips and leads is not a viable option.  A CJIS compliant, web based environment is required to properly store, track, assign, and collaborate during a major investigation.  The Major Crimes Investigation Management System created by Adventos does just that.

Some of the features included in the new Major Crimes Investigative Management System are:

  • A centralized, secure location for tracking ALL investigations.
  • Complete visibility, allowing investigative units and command staff to track and assign leads as they are investigated.
  • Unique views for leads by status and assignment.
  • Investigative supervisors can add or remove internal or external members of an investigation as the need arises.
  • Tasks and action items can be assigned to the right people instantly, allowing everyone to take important actions as quickly as possible.
  • Activities and follow up can be managed and organized so that the appropriate resources can be allocated appropriately.
  • Tracking and linking of investigative assets such as witnesses, suspects, associates, anonymous tipsters and media assets.

Many innovative features have also been included that are designed to make these types of major crimes investigations easier and more efficient than ever before. Templated forms and document libraries help save precious time in a situation where every second counts.  Law enforcement agencies at every level can now easily collaborate with one another in a secure and effective way, tracking complex investigations that are constantly changing. It even includes the ability to link to specific investigations with rich text and all other forms of relevant media.

At Adventos, we want nothing more than to do our part to help the hardworking men and women of law enforcement keep us safe each day and we believe that our new Major Crimes Investigation Management System will do precisely that.

If you have any additional questions about the Major Crimes Investigation Management System, or if you’re eager to learn more about the SmartForce Agency Management System (AMS), please don’t delay – contact Adventos today.

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New and Improved Must Have Tools for Crime Analysts

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

crimeAnalysts

In late 2015, I wrote about how Crime Analysts across the country are becoming the secret weapons for law enforcement. Crime analyst work and their products, such as intelligence bulletins, help organize crime reduction responses and policing efforts.

In the article I described the must have tools for crime analysts to be successful in their role.

At that time, we did not yet have the powerful BulletinWizard by SmartForce™. We have learned a lot since then and because of our learning, here is a shorter and improved take on must have tools for crime analysts and their law enforcement agencies.

One – CAD and RMS
No change here. CAD and RMS provide a lot of the raw crime report data that is needed to understand crime trends. Enough said, this is table stakes.

Two – Law Enforcement Specific GIS
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) leverage location-based data to create actionable intelligence. In fact, GIS systems like Esri provide more than mapping and make for powerful analysis tools for crime analysts. Visually, on a map, GIS can fuse together crime data, prolific offenders, and parolees. Esri is the industry standard for GIS.

Three – Crime Analysis Software
Moved from number two to three. Crime analysis software can range from simple tools to very robust software packages with powerful query, visualization, and forecasting capabilities. GIS systems today contain sophisticated analytical tools including potential integrations with CAD and RMS, possibly replacing the need for a stand-alone crime analysis product.

Four – Agency Management System
Public safety responses to crime reduction initiatives must be organized, secure, targeted, and proactive. Most responses involve coordination and collaboration from multiple units and often occur during uncommitted time. A crime intelligence product has a deeper impact on crime reduction when assigned to the right units and implemented/utilized in an organized manner. To see the level of success possible see how the Grand Junction Police is getting results from proactive policing and their impressive results from a recent targeted operation that you can read about here.

Intelligence Tip:
Email is sometimes used to communicate with the field. You can see posts about the risks of email on this blog. The SmartForce™ Agency Management System compliments your RMS and CAD and is CJIS compliant.

Five – The BulletinWizard by SmartForce™
Crime analysts have too much on their hands to fight with desktop publishing software to create intelligence bulletins. The BulletinWizard by SmartForce ™ cuts down the time of creating bulletins in half, is easy to use, is cloud based, and CJIS compliant. Powerful features like secure group sharing and integration with other Crime Analyst products make it a winner with crime analysts.

 

About SmartForce™ by Adventos

SmartForce™ is the only CJIS compliant and mobile agency management system designed to drive current policing strategies.  SmartForce™ also provides a single platform for integrating and automating all law enforcement administrative processes outside of CAD and RMS.

For more information visit www.adventos.com and view a video demonstration of SmartForce™ today.

You can read the older post here.

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Public Private Partnership: BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

smartForceBulletinWizardRetail

According to a recent study conducted by the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention, retail theft may be growing at a greater rate than most would guess.  It is estimated that there are 27 million shoplifters operating in the United States today – a number that breaks down to about one out of every 11 shoppers. The cost to the retail industry is approaching $50 billion per year according to a recent NRF Survey.

To impact the world of retail theft, store owners and loss prevention managers must provide key information to their law enforcement agency and other store owners that can help detect retail crime patterns, identify potential shoplifters, and inform of criminal MO’s. This requires an effective public/private partnership between the retail industry and law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, county, tribal, and local level.

BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft

The BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft helps curb retail theft and improve community safety by providing store owners and loss prevention managers a way to communicate crime related information within their desired retail networks, including and importantly, their local law enforcement agency.

The major benefit of the solution comes by way of the Retailer Crime Bulletin Board, a common bulletin board with secure group sharing functionality that makes the sharing of retail crime related information to their local law enforcement agency quick and more efficient.

With the BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft, you maintain superior visibility over:

  • People who have attempted to steal, or those who you believe have stolen.
  • The specific type of property, goods or other assets that were targeted and stolen.
  • Check or credit card fraud.
  • Information about any attempts made to identify these people.

As mentioned, it is also possible to use the solution to identify certain trends and patterns as they develop in real-time – many of which would have previously gone undiscovered. You can see repeat offenders and how often they target a location, or which “hot ticket” items are the most common theft targets so retailers can make better and more informed decisions on how to protect their property. Our retail partners will also be pleased to know that a direct connection with their local police department can be included in the cost of their subscription.

Law Enforcement: How to get started for FREE

This public private partnership is made possible by retailers and Adventos and is FREE to Law Enforcement.

To enroll in the program, email chris.arvayo@adventos.com or call 480-371-5956 with your name, title, and agency name.

Law Enforcement eligibility will be validated. Once validated you will be granted read-only access to the secure and CJIS compliant BulletinWizard by SmartForce™ for Retail Theft so you can begin taking a pro-active approach to reducing retail theft and increasing your agency’s community oriented policing efforts.

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SmartForce™ Shift Briefing by Adventos

Chris Arvayo
Customer Success Manager | Product

shiftBriefing

21st Century Communication and Collaboration For 21st Century Law Enforcement Agencies

Law enforcement agency personnel understand the unique challenges of running traditional in-person shift briefings. Individual workload, pending calls for an oncoming shift, and administrative duties such as training and court appearances often prevent members of the squad from attending briefing. In a typical work week, you would be incredibly lucky to have even a single briefing where every member of the squad was actually present.

This doesn’t mean that shift briefings are any less important. Far from it: a quality, proactive agency depends on an open and real-time stream of communication to get things done and to achieve better, more effective outcomes. For the continued success of law enforcement agencies around the country, along with the safety and security of communities they serve, we must apply the most current technology to community policing and problem oriented policing models.

Luckily, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the CJIS compliant solution is here.

Introducing: SmartForce™ Shift Briefing

At Adventos, we recognize the logistical challenges our agency partners face in terms of sharing information with one another while getting everyone on the same page. With this in mind, SmartForce™ Shift Briefing was born – a single sophisticated yet easy-to-use digital workspace built with information sharing, collaboration and assigning projects and tasks at its core.

With SmartForce™ Shift Briefing, a patrol officer has instant access to ALL the information they need to effectively serve their community – whether they’ve been able to attend an actual in-person shift briefing or they’re halfway across town waiting for their court appearance to start.

All mission-critical information is easily updated in the SmartForce™ Shift Briefing tool where it can be accessed from ANY desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone device with an active Internet connection, allowing Officers to consume mission critical information needed to do their job in the safest and most effective manner.

Department leaders can choose between sharing data agency-wide, or on the district or shift levels. Whatever is the best decision to be made given the circumstances is now one that can be made as quickly and as easily as possible.

SmartForce™ Shift Briefing isn’t just an innovative solution to the logistical challenge created by traditional, in-person shift briefings. It’s also an easy-to-use tool built with form and functionality in mind. In the end, we wanted to help empower law enforcement agencies with a tool that brings them closer – both literally and metaphorically – to the communities they serve through effective, efficient communication and collaboration.

The days of trying to get all officers in the same room at the same time to share essential findings and other information are long over. If something happens, you’re never more than a few seconds away from pushing those events out to EVERYONE who needs to know – whether they’re at the station or in the field doesn’t actually matter.

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Grand Junction Police Dept. Continues to have success with their Proactive Approach to Crime Reduction

Brian Mc Grew
VP of Education

GrandJunctionPoliceDept

The Grand Junction Police Department has found the utilization of proactive policing can make a difference in their community. Over the past three years alone, CFS (or “calls for service”) in the 2100 North Avenue area grew to an unsettling average of about 130 per week. Calls ran the gamut among nearly every type of crime you could think of and the department was devoting a huge amount of its resources to this one area and trends still showed no signs of reversing. It was clear that a new approach was needed and it was needed as soon as possible.

The new approach decided upon was to leverage a police-centric intelligence collecting and sharing platform to collect and disseminate operational information, align manpower, manage equipment, and account for officer activity.

With the addition of the SmartForce™ Agency Management System (AMS), the Grand Junction Police Department embarked on an active, focused operation for 13 weeks (February 17, 2017 to May 17, 2017) on the 2100 North Avenue area.

collaboration

By creating an “Ops Discussion” in SmartForce™ for the different units within GJPD to post and access information in real-time, officers and supervisors gained immediate visibility over key data, direction, manpower, equipment, and other resources associated with the 2100 North Operation.  Officers could view real-time updates from their crime analyst on where crimes were taking place, what kinds of crimes, and contact information about suspects in the area as well as those calling for service.  Supervisors made decisions on deploying manpower and equipment resources based on the real-time data so as to deter crimes from occurring through such a pro-active policing approach.

The results speak volumes.  From the charts below comparing Calls for Service over like time periods to the 2100 North Avenue, a full 50% decrease was seen or 65 per week. Even after the operation had completed, the CFS rate dropped to only six per week – a record low for the area and the department. 2100-North-Ave

In short, SmartForce™ gave the Grand Junction Police Department something much more powerful than simple information – it gave them real-time insight and operational organization never before realized to significantly elevate public safety to this problem-area for the first time in years.

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Change is good, right?

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

MarianoDelleDonne

We are surrounded by change, in our work, the community, and even more organically in our changing seasons. As I write this, I am surrounded by the impressive fall season in Colorado, as the trees turn from green to all shades of yellow, red and orange. So, for a change I would like to share my story from a recent interview I did with Vince Menzione about what drives me, and in turn Adventos and SmartForce in our vision to help 1 billion people.

This is a guest blog post from Vince Menzione at Cloud Wave Partners, original article link here.  http://cloudwavepartners.net/blog/2017/7/4/6zin4zmq5vurxyjr6yctpq19jjuwyv

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The Four Ways That Email is Hurting Your Organization… and What You Can Absolutely Do About It

Mariano Delle Donne
CEO

emails

Believe it or not, there are certain situations where email is just NOT an appropriate or effective communication method… and many scenarios amongst law enforcement rank high on this list. You may think that there are few things faster than sending a quick email to keep someone in the loop, but there are a number of ways in which email is likely hurting your entire organization that you don’t even realize.

Thankfully, there is also something that you can do about it right away.

1. Email Has Worse Security Than You’d Think
Perhaps the number one way that email is hurting your organization has to do with security, or a lack thereof. Simply put, if you are sending sensitive information via email you are NOT CJIS compliant, and the chances are high that at some point you will accidentally email something to someone who shouldn’t have gotten it in the first place. Between accidental recipients to improperly “Reply All” situations to messages getting forwarded to the wrong person, this has “bad news” written all over it.

2. Email Has Almost No Accountability
Email is a terrific notification method and it’s also great for one-on-one communication situations. But in instances where team collaboration is a requirement, email is a detriment for one very important reason: accountability. If email truly is your “inbox for work,” there is a very slim chance that you can actually get a clear status as to where things are in the chain of command, who is supposed to be doing what (and when), and more. There’s just no transparency, particularly as you navigate a world that requires secure, CJIS compliant team collaboration with long running operations.

3. Email is Overwhelming
Think about the volume of different types of email messages you receive daily: birthday wishes, retirement party notifications, notices from outside agencies and much more. All of these land in your email alongside shift briefings and crime bulletins. Your brain desperately tries to make sense of it, process it, filter it and sort it so that you can get to work… often with less than adequate results.

In fact, four out of five agencies that we surveyed at Adventos said that they were so overwhelmed by email that “in some cases, we just hit delete when the crime analyst sends us a bulletin.”

4. Young People Hate Email
Millennials are used to fast and efficient communication methods that they can access anywhere, from any device, at any time. They absolutely hate having to connect the dots from a multitude of emails, leading to a classic case of “death by email.” As your workforce continues to get younger from here on out, it is absolutely time for a change.

What You Can Do About It

Thankfully, the SmartForce™ BulletinWizard™ was built from the ground up to address situations like these and more. Create and manage your bulletins with a secure, standardized and evidence-based bulletin maker – freeing yourself from the restrictions of email for now and for all time. Not only that, but BulletinWizard is also CJIS compliant – it is intended to allow a crime analyst or detective to create the right bulletins quickly and securely, managing them all in a centralized location for the benefit of an entire organization.

SmartForce can be used for the sharing of information and intelligence in ALL situations – from the routine shift briefing to the complex operation, from crime stats to major crimes investigations. These are the types of benefits that we want to help your entire organization enjoy here at Adventos. With a secure collaboration environment, everyone in the organization can be sure of their role and see relevant information. You will improve accountability in your agency and speed up crime reduction strategies.

It’s time to say “goodbye” to email and say “hello” to SmartForce.

Call us today at 303-800-5040, or visit us at www.adventos.com.

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