Serve and Protect Your Police Force with In Car Digital Video Recording

First things first. For those non-believers and late-bloomers still thinking, “Why record video?” Think about disputes between offenders and officers…how do you determine what really happened? What about all those court dates for minor offenses that are keeping officers in court instead of out on patrol. Think about all the liability risks that come with civilians, old and young, using smartphones with cameras that can record YOU. These devices and applications tie to the lawsuits you may hear about in the news where offenders are giving officers a bad name. Are you keeping up with these concerns? How are you addressing them? While smartphones and instant communication may have started predominantly with the younger generation, it has prevailed across the board in all agencies and to people of all ages. Technology continues to evolve at such high speeds that you can no longer afford to refute the revolution. Besides, with the constant change of technology, digital video isn’t really a luxury anymore, it’s becoming a necessity.

Meet Our Techs: The Experience Behind ChiComm

Curt graduated high school in 1978, back when gas was $0.63 a gallon and “Grease” & “Saturday Night Fever” were most popular on the big screen. That same year, Illinois Bell Company introduced the first ever Cellular Mobile Phone System; something that Curt probably didn’t realize he’d be tied to in the future. So at this time, he stuck to his trade as a mechanic. Curt had been a mechanic since age 13 because his dad owned 5 gas stations and he was always exposed to the automotive field.

What we discovered at this year's Motorola Channel Partner Expo

It was a momentous year at the Motorola roadshow in Las Vegas. Our yearly trek to understand products, goals and networking with colleagues really put a vision in our minds. As a follow up to my notes on the Public Safety (Future of the DBlock) aspect of the Motorola Expo this year, we also looked into the future with Digital Mobile Radio (DMR); and for Motorola this means MOTOTRBO. A technology that lends itself to gain two voice paths for one channel, it effectively doubles the ability of a customer’s radio system for voice traffic. In addition with Application Developers who write software to these radio platforms, we had a chance to review the concepts and systems that allow unique platforms such as GPS, Texting, Personal Location systems and Interoperability to be displayed in one location.

Meet Our Techs: The Experience Behind ChiComm

It’s not often I sit down with a technician who’s been around long enough to experience significant political events, numerous civil rights movements, several wars, plus the development and infancy of several revolutionizing technologies. Realizing I have a small space here to summarize our discussion, I will do my best to highlight the most relevant of Bill’s path to ChiComm.

Future Concern for Public Safety: Funding

Every year we make the glorious trip to Las Vegas to attend the Motorola Expo and follow up with IWCE (International Wireless Communications Expo).   For geeks like me it lends to understanding new technologies and reviewing what new products and innovations the two way radio community develops.

Tell us about some of the technological changes that have been happening in your department.

    "With technology moving so fast, governments and police departments don’t always move as fast, mostly because it costs so much money. So we are usually at the back end of changes and technology. But some of the things we’ve done internally are look at the processes in place and what we do on a day to day basis, and try to apply technology to those things. For example, with parking permissions, we used to fill out a form by hand and one copy would go to the records department and one would go to the officer on the street, etc.  So we asked, how can we take things to the next level? We need to be able to e-mail that document and attach it to an MDC laptop that’s in the squad cars so the officer that’s in that beat gets an email message. Plus we now have a remote printer to get things to our remote location in Bensenville, and it's e-mailed to both records departments. It seems like something that’s no big deal, but when you have a process like this for every task you do, it ends up being really inefficient. So migrating to these new technologies and new ways to do things makes things more convenient, and now our dispatchers can do everything from sitting at their consoles.  

The Experience Behind ChiComm

So the saying goes: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. For Mike it wasn't that he didn't succeed in his work, it was that he didn't succeed in finding a place of work that matched both his interests and abilities. Not at first, at least. Mike traveled a unique career path before landing at Chicago Communications.

Pointers from the Principals: Emphasizing Each Customer's Importance

      Over the years I’ve been a part of many different service-oriented organizations.  I’ve spent time in System Implementation roles, Help Desk Supervisory roles, Dispatch Center management, Support Center management, and in Human Resource management, where every employee is a customer.  In each of these roles, as in any customer service role, there were many challenges. Every time the phone rang I had to assume it was a customer calling with a problem of some kind. And throughout the day I’d always say to myself , “That's why I'm here, to help them." It was unlikely the phones were ringing with customers eager to share how wonderful things were.  But there was one phrase I heard frequently over the years and it always surprised me to hear this from a customer: "I know I'm not one of your big customers, so I understand I might not receive the same level of attention but..."

      Every time I've heard this statement, I've always been taken aback by it. My automatic response upon hearing it has always been, "Really?  You're not one of our big customers?  Does knowing that information cause me to behave any differently, or treat you as any less important?"  And my answer to this was always the same -- an unwavering "No, not at all." I didn’t realize an answer that was so obvious to me, could be so unclear to others.

This is a guest blog provided by Smart911 and written by Todd Piett, Chief Product Officer at Rave Mobile Safety. Visit the bottom of this post for more information about Todd. You can follow him on Twitter @toddpiett.

The public safety community is under increasing pressure to find a solution that meets growing public expectations around the ability to Text-to-911. The FCC is actively soliciting feedback on interim solutions while the industry continues working on and evaluating options for texting with NG9-1-1. Unfortunately, misconceptions about texting abound. As a company we have been delivering emergency communications via SMS and have years of data as well as operational experience with the realities of text messaging. We are also actively involved in research and development on text via RTT utilizing the protocols envisioned in NG9-1-1. Based on our experience, here are the top 3 myths:

Myth: Text messaging to 9-1-1 is available today or will be magically enabled by NG9-1-1.