Our team was delighted to be on the ground at the California Police Chiefs Association’s Annual Training Symposium earlier this month.

We don’t want to change how public safety agencies work. Instead, Peregrine augments how leadership teams, investigators, analysts, and patrol officers are already doing their job with powerful, practical, easy-to-use tools. Spending time in the field with public safety personnel, hearing directly from them about their challenges and ideas, informs how we build and deploy technology.

These are the three most common topics we heard mentioned from California Police Department leadership teams:

Disparate, disconnected systems

Law enforcement personnel have a tongue-in-cheek saying: The swivel chair is the best technological innovation for police because it allows them to move from monitor-to-monitor or program-to-program to get the information they need.

It’s hyperbole, but there is truth to it.

Need a case report? Search the RMS. Need an automated license plate reader (ALPR) scan? Search the ALPR system.

Need CCTV footage? Search the video vendor’s system. Need dispatch information about a call for service? Search the CAD system.

Need an old, paper file from 15 years ago? “Search” the file room.

We’ve changed that dynamic for good. We can integrate, transform, and enrich data of any type or scale, from any system.

Sgt. Kyle Baker, from the Pittsburg, CA Police Department says that “rather than searching for information across all our systems, Peregrine gives me that data in one place.”

You can learn more about our platform and technology here.

Real-time crime centers (RTCCs)

In real-time crime centers (RTCCs), effective response is measured in mere seconds. Analysts in RTCCs are accustomed to an unfortunate norm: wasting time switching between program to program. Geospatial and video data from drones are in one system, citations in another, warrants in another, RMS and CAD in another, and evidence in another, calls for service in another, AVL data in another – the list goes on.

Simply put, supporting the response to crimes in near real-time – the fundamental purposes of a real-time crime center – is delayed or hampered if RTCC personnel are spending time searching across multiple tools to produce information like a video feed, ALPR scan, gunshot detection notification, or data from a record management system (RMS).

There are other challenges to deploying RTCCs, like integrating them into overall departmental operations, deploying effective staffing models, and protecting civil liberties.

Captain Lenny Nerbetski (ret.) has five tips to improve your real-time crime center.

Protecting, motivating, and empowering patrol officers

Officer recruitment and retention remains a priority for law enforcement leadership across the country. They’re right: The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) reports that from 2020 to 2021, surveyed agencies had an 18% increase in resignation rates and a 45% increase in retirement rates compared to the previous year. The challenge hasn’t abated – total sworn officer staffing continues to decline.

We have some resources for you on officer resilience – how we think about empowering field officers, which supports recruitment and retention:

• Our CEO, Nick Noone, wrote an article in Police1 about how to use data to empower officers and keep them safe.
• Captain John Reynolds, from the Livermore Police Department, spoke with GovTech about using Peregrine to “track calls in real time and break down data to show the type of calls that specific officers are handling, such as violent crimes or suicides.” Our platform empowers him to understand what officers are exposed to, and how Livermore PD leadership can support officers in the field.
• Captain Reynolds goes deeper on how their department uses Peregrine to analyze shift patterns, consider exposure to traumatic incidents, and assess workload within the specific context of their agency.

Didn’t get a chance to meet with us at CPCA? Have questions about RTCCs or empowering officers? Drop us a line.