The Implementation and Benefits of CAD Systems for University Police Departments
As seen in: 9-1-1 Magazine
Friday, May 30, 2003
Public safety professionals vow to protect and serve their communities regardless of the challenges they face due to budget cuts and lack of tools and resources. Today’s public safety technology helps overcome obstacles and enhance operations from solving cases, tracking information and decreasing response times - giving public safety professionals the ability to accomplish more and improve performance without additional resources.
University police departments across the nation recognize the benefits of using a software system designed specifically for public safety, and are proactively pursuing the technology to help increase safety and meet the needs of college students and faculty.
When parents and prospective college students research universities, one of the many deciding factors is campus safety. University police departments must publish annual crime statistics for crimes against persons and property/state, showing university related versus non-university related crimes. In most instances, these statistics are viewed by parent(s) and/or student(s) during the decision-making process.
Until recently, both Northwestern University Police Department in Illinois and Kent State University Police Department in Ohio conducted operations with an antiquated Records Management system and without a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. Dispatchers manually wrote calls for service, incidents, incident number, unit(s) dispatched, location, contact information, details and the date and time. This made the tracking and reporting of daily activities inefficient.
“University police departments are service-oriented agencies, but without CAD our department lacked the ability to accurately track the services performed,” said Assistant Chief Dean Tondiglia, Kent State University Police Department. “New World Systems’ CAD software tracks the information entered into the system and allows us to easily generate comprehensive, daily reports.”
Advanced CAD solutions are designed to decrease response times and streamline workflow. Based on incident type, CAD should automatically prompt which units to dispatch and provide agency-defined special response instructions to ensure that proper procedures are met for each incident. In many cases, universities choose the option for the system to prompt dispatchers for addional information based on the incident to provide the officer with additional information and for record keeping purposes.
Prior to their recent software implementations, both departments had data retrieval issues and system failure with their Records Management software, which is not uncommon with out-of-date systems.
“We chose a fully integrated solution to give our dispatchers easy access to critical information from the Records Management and NCIC databases through the CAD system,” said Sergeant Merrill Silverman, Northwestern University Police Department. “This improves the flow of information in the field and increases officer safety by allowing dispatchers to quickly let an officer know of any known hazards prior to arriving at a scene.”
Implementing a major software system takes teamwork from all parties involved, specifically the vendor, department-appointed project manager and the users.
The first step is determining the needs of the university and understanding what processes are currently in place to ensure the system is set up to maximize productivity. Different from municipal departments, the system must be set up for municipal and university dispatching and record keeping, making the implementation process more challenging.
“Our department has 30 sworn officers and seven dispatchers that also help the City of Kent Police Department patrol streets, make arrests and provide back up when needed, in addition to their duties on our campus of 24,000,” said Tondiglia.
As the case with many universities, both Northwestern and Kent State Police Departments have limited resources to help with the implementation process. One of the biggest challenges is converting existing data from previous systems into the new software database, which can take a lot of time when trying to pull data from an outdated system. As with all implementation projects, the goal is to get the department in a live environment as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality in service, so this process takes additional effort from the vendor to support the conversion of personnel files, master names, case data and other files, making the transition as seamless as possible.
One of the differences faced during the set up of the CAD solution at a university is the mapping aspect. Municipal police departments use postal addresses, street name, number and zip code, while universities are located in a single zip code and use the name of a building and the room number for an address, which may include alpha characters not typically found in city addresses.
To complete the system set up, a catalog of unit numbers, incident types, jurisdiction numbers, maps, areas and sections from the university and the City is created to automate the data entry process for the dispatcher. Dispatchers can quickly fill in the screen by selecting data from the drop down menu for each field.
Once the system is installed and set up to meet the agency’s business rules, on-site training is provided for administrators, supervisors and end-users. “We chose a proven Windows solution, because it is a familiar platform for computer users and an easy to use system for non-computer users, which will help make the transition smoother,” said Silverman.
The Northwestern Police Department has 40 sworn officers and five dispatchers that support the campus of 20,000 and help provide services to the City of Evanston with its population of 75,000. With the new CAD and Records Management solution installed, supervisors are pleased with the ability to track all activity on a daily basis showing the department’s workload.
Because the dispatchers were used to manually writing calls it was a difficult transition the first month.
“It is hard to implement change,” said Silverman. “But, as we learned more about the software, the more excited we became about generating crime analysis reports to allocate resources and track high-crime hot spots. The software automates our current processes, making our daily activities much easier. Our dispatchers quickly saw the benefits of having easy access to critical information - increasing officer and campus safety.”
With a new CAD solution, dispatchers at the Kent State University Police Department play more of a role in the agency’s community policing initiatives, because they have more access to reports and other intelligence information.
“The investigative aspects of the new solution allow us to track information on upcoming parties, club activities and civil disobedience such as war protests, which is common at a university,” said Tondiglia. “Our dispatchers now have this information accessible to alert officers and better allocate resources.”
The key element in successfully implementing a project of this magnitude at the municipal and the university level is communication throughout the department. Each person that is going to be using the system should be involved in the trainingfrom basic functionality to the new benefits. There is a more positive response when officers are shown they have enhanced case management capabilities; that records personnel can generate reports they need on-demand; and, dispatchers have an easy to use system that provides information they need to have at their fingertips.
For press inquiries, contact: New World Systems
Marketing Department
888 West Big Beaver Road
Troy, Michigan 48084
Phone: 248.269.1000
Fax: 248.269.1020 www.newworldsystems.com info@newworldsystems.com
