As expected, staffing is the primary concern of most police agencies, along with seamless software integration and finding some value from staff augmentation services.
83 percent of those surveyed said recruiting, staffing and retention are their top challenges and 94 percent are concerned about staffing shortages; and 83 percent said they want more seamless software integration to improve the officer experience. Police surveyed also said they needed help overcoming barriers such as training, skills development and inadequate IT resources.
Marcus Claycomb, Panasonic’s national business development manager for public sector at Panasonic Connect and a former officer himself, said better utilizing technology can help with this issue. In general, he said, many police agencies “don’t know what they don’t know” about what’s available in terms of technology that can be useful.
For example, many agencies still run with a Mobile Data Terminal in the car, which is not accessible to the officer when they’re outside of the car. That’s not really “mobile” and stifles the officer's ability to make notes while out of the vehicle and to access Department of Justice data such as arrest records, fingerprints and so forth.
“This is not supported by empirical data, but I will tell you that the people I talk to are not using computers in a full mobile fashion that would give them their greatest advantage,” Claycomb said. “There are still agencies operating with in-car systems, Mobile Data Terminals that are locked in the vehicle, so they’re great for report writing and they certainly add to the ability to work with CAD [computer-aided dispatch],” he said, but making those computers truly mobile could provide greater benefits to the officers.
“Making those computers mobile solutions and making multitools that can deliver drivers’ license scanning, pictures and data collection for evidentiary purposes — there are a variety of things you can do once you take that computer in the vehicle and make it more mobile.”
That “stranded” computer is the result of the early rollouts, which were governed by Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements that computers had to be locked in a vehicle unless they were assigned specifically to a certain officer. Those requirements have evolved, but police agencies haven’t.
“So many times, agencies suffer from ‘we don’t know what we don’t know,’” Claycomb said. “They are just operating under that [CJIS] initial rollout guide, but as information comes out and they talk to other agencies that are using computers for more than one thing, they try to find ways to apply that to better ways to use technology to their advantage.”
Claycomb said the CJIS requirements now allow, in certain circumstances, for that computer to be unlocked so the officer can keep it in their possession and take full advantage of it even when out of the car.
“So when I’m doing prisoner duty in a hospital and will be there a couple of hours [free], I can still do paperwork while the patient/prisoner is in surgery or I’m taking a lunch break and want to write some reports.”
Claycomb also said police agencies need more say when it comes to IT decisions.
"It's not necessarily a surprise, but what still bothers me as a previous law enforcement officer is there is still so much we don’t know, and one of the other things is there are still so many agencies that the CEO and or his designee is not taking control of the IT decision-making,” he said. “Agencies should have a say in what technology they are using and to do that they have to have a knowledge base of what is available to them and make the best choice to address their policies and procedures.”
The decision-makers in the police agencies — the chiefs, deputy chiefs, captains — need to be able to work directly in the procurement process to ensure they are getting the technology they need, said Aidan Clifford, director of market solutions at Panasonic Connect.
“You take back the power of, ‘I went and got this money and I want to spend it on how I need to help my agency,'" he explained, "kind of pulling back some power from the city or county IT people, who want to dictate what you should or shouldn’t do with your technology decisions.”
