The first police department in the U.S. is now redefining
what it means to be a technology leader
NICE has recently announced that the Boston Police Department (PD) will be deploying the full suite of NICE Inform solutions for quality assurance, multimedia incident reconstruction, and IP telephony and radio recording. The solutions will be deployed at three sites including its primary and backup 9-1-1 centers. The new technology will also support Boston’s EMS dispatch operations, which is co-located with the Police 9-1-1 center.
The NICE solutions anchor on other technology investments that the Boston PD has made as it transitions to an IP-based, interoperable, next generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) ready, public safety environment.
“Our mission is to use innovative strategies and partnerships to protect and serve the citizens of Boston,” said Shawn Romanoski, Director of Telecommunications, Boston Police Department, “The work we’re doing with NICE to upgrade our 9-1-1 center technology is one way we’re accomplishing that. It’s also critical to our preparation for next generation 9-1-1.”
NICE’s certified direct integration with the Airbus DS VESTA® VoIP 9-1-1 system means that the Boston PD can reliably capture its IP-based emergency communications. It will begin accepting SMS 9-1-1 texts next year, and thanks to the new NICE technology, they’ll already be prepared to record and manage these communications as well.
“As the first police department in the U.S., the Boston Police Department enjoys a rich tradition of being a pioneer in policing and public safety,” said Christopher Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE, “With their continued work with NICE, the Boston PD is now redefining what it means to be a leader by applying technology to improve service and solve everyday problems, while building a solid foundation for the future.”
Boosting efficiency and quality assurance
Consistent, ongoing quality assurance (QA) is vital to every public safety answering point (PSAP). The Boston PD will use NICE Inform evaluator to ensure that its telecommunicators are following proper protocols and that the systems they rely on are properly supporting them – so they can provide the highest levels of service to Boston’s residents and visitors.
Like many police departments, the Boston PD performs QA reviews on telecommunicator calls today, but until now it has been a highly manual and subjective process. With NICE Inform evaluator, manual call selection will be replaced by automated call selection; and paper-based forms will be replaced by electronic scoring where evaluation results are automatically tabulated, tracked and shared.
“We’ll be far more automated from a QA perspective, and we’ll be able to complete evaluations and provide feedback much faster,” said Romanoski.
Boston PD also plans to use NICE’s screen recording, synchronized with voice recordings, to better understand what happens during calls. “It’s going to be a great tool for us for QA and training,” added Romanoski, “If something goes wrong, we’ll be able to understand why and correct it.”
Expediting records requests
The Boston PD churns out about 6,000 records requests annually, for district attorneys, detectives, media and private citizens. NICE Inform will eliminate wasted time on duplicate requests. Records will be stored in Inform’s electronic incident folders, cross-referenced to computer aided dispatch (CAD) incident IDs or court case numbers, so there will never be a need to do the same work twice.
“With our old system, whenever we received a duplicate request, we would have to go back and recreate the entire incident recording all over again,” said Romanoski, “Once we create a scenario in Inform and save it, we can easily find and retrieve the original and provide an exact duplicate.”
NICE is working with its partner Business Electronics (BEI) to deploy the NICE solutions at the Boston PD.
