Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Public safety apps

Approaching six years, the Director's Desk is among the old timers in the tiny niche of public safety blogs. As such, you'll find me pretty readily with a Google search.  Since one of my more common topics (see the label cloud) is technology and tech-related issues, it's probably not surprising that I get a lot of contacts from around the country--and world--on such topics, from people who have encountered my blog or Googled such things as "police iPad".

Lately, the University of North Carolina has contacted me to seek some publicity for a new application that one of their faculty members has developed.  ASSET (Arrest, Search and Seizure, Electronic Tool) is an iOS app with a nice summary of key points of the law of arrest, search and seizure.  Although it is tailored to North Carolina statutes, on balance it is a good resource for the most current interpretations of the Federal District Courts and the United States Supreme Court.  I particularly appreciate its simplicity and brevity. UNC faculty member Jeff Welty is the developer, and has great credentials for this work.  I've added ASSET to the "References" folder on my iOS devices.

On the fire & rescue side of the house, every firefighter with a mobile device should have WISER: the Wireless Information Service for Emergency Responders from the National Library of Medicine at the National Institute of Health.  Availabe for Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry, and even Palm (!).  What, no WISER for my Sharp Wizard?

It's been a while since I've blogged about mobile apps for public safety, so I might touch on a few more this week.  I'd appreciate any nominations that other readers of the Director's Desk would like to contribute.

3 comments:

ARRRRG!!!! said...

My favorite app.

Andy W said...

I was recently made aware of Geoparade, a tool to allow crime analysts to send info to officers in the field. (I would suggest the analyst's blog as well to anyone reading this blog!)

How many officers these days have smart phones that can use apps?

Tom Casady said...

Andy W,

To answer your question, it's the great majority. On day one of my Information Resources class in the police academy a few weeks ago, I had the recruits show me their phones. Twelve of 13 were smartphones, split pretty evenly between iPhones and Android.