A Helping Hand Keeping Police Officers Connected with the Public
The way law enforcement interacts and communicates with the public is rapidly changing thanks to the proliferation of technology. Report taking has gone from paper-based, to online forms, to a conversational process aided by artificial intelligence, thanks to public safety software solutions companies like Versaterm. Rohan Galloway-Dawkins, Chief Product Officer at Versaterm, recently spoke to OFFICER Magazine about its newly expanded AI-powered non-emergency reporting solution, which was relaunched as Versaterm CommunityReport.
This article appeared in the September/October issue of OFFICER Magazine. Click Here to subscribe to OFFICER Magazine.
Evolving capabilities
Galloway-Dawkins joined Versaterm about three years ago and has worked in public safety software for about 20 years. When he joined the company, it was busy expanding beyond its CAD and RMS solutions to create what he describes as a “purpose-driven, end-to-end public safety ecosystem.” He says the company is focused on the end users—both in public safety and the community at large.
He noted that first responders need the most help while responding to calls. “Something bad happened. Someone in the community is reaching out for help. All the way through the response, through the resolution, investigation and into potential incarceration.”
A lot of past community policing and community engagement efforts have been based on face-to-face interactions, but the tools available through AI have changed the way agencies communicate with their residents.
“The focus that we have now on community engagement is more holistic,” says Galloway-Dawkins. He recalled that one of the police chiefs that Versterm works with compared community sentiment to a bank. The service that is provided every day is added to that bank. Then, when something happens or when an agency needs to engage with the community to solve a problem or to get through an issue, it makes a withdrawal from the bank.
“How can we help public safety provide better service to their community to help build that bank, and also provide a better experience for the community itself?”
On the other side of the spectrum, he says Versaterm is also focused on how to make the jobs of law enforcement, fire and EMS easier and more efficient. “It needs to be that win-win by providing better service to the community while also addressing some of these resource constraints that are happening on the public safety side.”
Creating a better solution
Versaterm CommunityReport, formerly known as Case Service Reporting, allows the public to easily submit non-emergency reports online to receive faster assistance while reducing the manual workload for understaffed emergency call centers and law enforcement agencies. Galloway-Dawkins says CommunityReport leverages machine learning and AI, specifically natural language processing, in order to engage with the public.
Traditional online reporting solutions are based on forms, which Galloway-Dawkins says can be problematic. “Forms tend to make people sad,” he says. “They’re long, they’re daunting. You look at this thing and you think, ‘Man, I have to complete this entire thing?’ ” He adds that forms also contain a lot of lingo dealing with legislation and codes that the general public may be unaware of. He says CommunityReport changes this. “You don’t need to know the difference between an assault and a battery. You don’t need to know the difference between what it means for the law if someone broke the door while entering your shed versus just opening the door and stealing your bike. But that makes a difference for how these things are coded and how that has to be handled on the public safety side.
We start by just leveraging that virtual investigator in the same kind of conversation that an officer would have on the street if they showed up and said, ‘Tell me what happened. I’m not going to ask you to press 1 for this or to fill out this form or to know the difference with all these different codes and procedures and things like that, just in your own words, tell me what happened.’ By leveraging that natural language processing and that conversational AI, we’re able to understand that and match it with all of the structure and the content that public safety needs.”
Paul Peluso | Editor
Paul Peluso is the Managing Editor of OFFICER Magazine and has been with the Officer Media Group since 2006. He began as an Associate Editor, writing and editing content for Officer.com. Previously, Paul worked as a reporter for several newspapers in the suburbs of Baltimore, MD.
