Police iPad

Until recently, I had never owned an Apple product.  I’m probably the only person left who does not own an iPod.  On April 30, though, the FedEx truck brought me a package containing my pre-ordered iPad 3G on the very day of its public release.  I’ve been using it since, and although it is personally-owned, it has proven to be a workhorse, too.

I didn’t expect it to be so.  All I wanted was to read books, magazines, and newspapers without carrying around the weight and bulk.  I had been contemplating buying an eReader when I read about the upcoming iPad, and decided it might be both a DVD player and an eReader, killing two birds with one stone.  Little did I know…. 

Since most all of LPD’s records management system is web-enabled, the iPad proved to be a dandy device for checking current calls, reading reports, or for that matter creating reports. It’s handy for my calendar and email, and mug shots absolutely look horrible, which is absolutely great.  I can’t get over the display quality, and how marvelous it looks with Google Earth, Google Maps, and StreetView. 

Sunday and Monday night during our weekend storms, I was glued to weather radar with WeatherBug, listening to radio traffic from the police, fire, and storm spotters using 5-0 Scanner HD, and checking our storm related police dispatches in the LPD records system.  Gotomeeting.com, which we use for remote participation in lineup, has a great iPad app, and all my important files and spreadsheets are available through Google Docs. 

I find myself booting my computer much less often at home and on the road, as the iPad fulfills many of my most common needs.  The battery really does last ten hours, and unlike my laptop, it’s instant on and instant off.  The several minutes required to boot up or shut down my laptop now seems like an eternity, and annoys me even more!  There are a few things I can’t do with the iPad: sites I use that demand Flash or Silverlight, things that require the specialized software loaded on my laptop, and some web pages that just don’t render quite right in Safari mobile. It’s not exactly the weapon of choice for substantial key stroking, but for the much of my work it’s fast, light, thin, powerful, and perfectly adequate. 

As advertised, the iPad fits right in between my smartphone and my laptop.  On a recent flight, I had a row-mate who was watching movie on an iPad while I read Road & Track.  He was a twenty-something audio engineer, on his way to set up the sound system at a rock concert. He had the same story as me: and Apple-avoider who couldn’t believe he bought it in the first place, but loves it now.  I think we’ll be seeing a lot of this form factor in the future of police mobile computing, and I’m betting there are more police officers out there finding on-the-job uses for iPads right now.

Police iPad update

After receiving my very first Apple product, an iPad 3G, on the very first day of its release, it has become a regular companion.  I previously blogged about my first impressions, but 8 months down the road, it has settled in as the information resources weapon of choice in my extensive arsenal of gadgets and computers. 

Many public apps come in handy during my workday: Gmail, Contacts, Calendar,  FlipClock, QuickVoice, Dropbox, Jumbo Calculator, WeatherBug, Skype, GoogleVoice to name a few.  Since most of LPD’s information resources are Intranet-based, a browser opens the door to almost all of our records management system: reports, case files, master name index, police contacts, criminal histories, vehicle information, stats, and more.  Our web-served mugshots look great on an iPad. 

We publish tons of reference materials on our Intranet: policy manuals, lookup tables, various directories, and so forth.  Web-served legal resources such as the Lincoln Municipal Code and the Nebraska State Statutes, come in handy, as does the City Council agenda, the legislation pending in the Nebraska Legislature, the State Sex Offender Registry, and the Department of Correctional Services Inmate Locator. 

Our shift roll call assemblies (we call it lineup) are webcast using gotomeeting.com, and the iPad GoToMeeting app is perfect when I can’t attend in person.  TipSoft’s mobile application works great for keeping up on Crimestoppers tip,.

Mapping is a real strong suit of the iPad, and since I am a major GIS geek, I have a lot of map applications.  MotionX-GPS Drive HD is an excellent navigation app, and the Google Earth iPad app is mildly addictive.  Google Maps soars on the iPad, and the Streetview feature seems born for the tablet form factor.  I can use some of the web-based mapping applications such as crimemapping.com , and ESRI’s ArcGIS for iOS lets me access my own custom-built web maps of crimes and incidents.  Lincoln has just acquired a new set of oblique aerial imagery, and the Pictometry Online web application works provides access to those images on the iPad. 

Just as soon as the police mobile data application vendors catch up with the rapidly-changing world of mobile computing, I’m betting tablets take over from the hardened docked laptops in a few hundred thousand police patrol cars around the United States.  Click the image below (and be patient) if you'd like to see some screenshots representing examples of how I use my iPad at work.

Police iPad advice

Apparently if you Google the terms "iPad" and "Police", a couple of my past blog posts are near the top, concerning my own experiences using an iPad as a tool in my job.  As a result, I get an occasional contact from other police & fire types on this subject.

Friday, a captain at a small department emailed me.  I'm not sure if he is comfortable with me naming the agency, so for the moment, I won't.  He had attended my presentation at a conference earlier this year, and had gone home determined to look into equipping his staff with tablets.  It appears he found a funding source, and now has 14 Apple iPads on order. He was looking for any advice or tips.  Here's my reply:

That is awesome! Congratulations. Here are my top three applications: 

1. Google Maps.  A good, current street map that follows you around, aerial photos if you need them, and street-level images.  You have good StreetView coverage in your town, and this works great on an iPad.  With 14 units, you could actually set up Google Latitude and create what amounts to an AVL system for your department--you'll all be able to see where one another are on the map.  This is how my family keeps track of me.  

2. The Apple web browser is Safari, and the iPad version is preinstalled.  Think of any website that you and your colleagues find useful on your desktop computers. If you have an Internet connection, you'll be able to access almost all of those same sites on the iPads. There are a few web components that do not work on iPads--sites that use Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, for example, but this is pretty minor.  One of the cool things you can do with an iPad is to take any bookmark you've set in the browser, and create it as an icon on the desktop. Stuff that you use often, like the sex offender registry, state statutes, state inmate locator, and any other websites can be set up as a one-click icon on the screen.  

3.  Any documents that you want to deploy--procedure manuals, handbooks, telephone contact lists, etc.--can be loaded up in iBooks, as .pdf files.  I've got a ton of these, and it works really, really well for arranging all those printed documents we're used to carrying in a three-ring binder!  If you get yourself a free Dropbox account, you can store the master documents in a shared folder, install the iPad Dropbox app on each iPad, and this would be a great way of distributing new or updated .pdfs.

I take it from your email that you are getting the WiFi only iPads, rather than the 3G model.  If you have a wireless network at the office, schools, home, etc., you can connect to those whenever you are close enough, but to really get the maximum value out of your iPads, you're going to need that Internet connection when you are on the move. A mobile hotspot like a MiFi or Overdrive wireless hotspot would be the solution, as you note.  One problem with that is that you then have another battery to go dead. Be careful when you go shopping for your mobile hotspot, and try to find one that will continue to transmit and receive while connected to the charge cord--some do, some don't--and make sure you've the cell provider you select has good coverage.

You'll have some work ahead getting fourteen iPads set up and activated, and some ongoing administrative work keeping application updates current. This isn't difficult, it's just going to require a little time now and then.  You can lock those iPads down in lots of different ways, to prevent users from accidentally deleting applications, or buying applications, or installing stuff, or using certain features like youtube, videos, iTunes, in app purchases, and so forth. 

I've got a post on my personal blog about some of my favorite apps:
http://lpd304.blogspot.com/2011/01/police-ipad-update.html 

Best,  

  Tom Casady  

Cut the cord

Longtime readers of my blog know that on occasion I will utterly geek out. This is one of those occasions, so proceed at your own risk. There are, however, many readers of the Director's Desk that share the nerd gene, so cut us some slack.

Every year, I teach a two-day course called Information Resources to new recruits in the police academy. I always enjoy it, and have blogged about it before. It was on the agenda for last Thursday and Friday, in week two of the current class. On Friday afternoon, I moved the 13 trainees from Classroom A to the main conference room. My motive was twofold: first, a change of scenery after a week in the classroom would be nice; second, I wanted to use the big 60 inch monitor in the conference room instead of the LCD projector in the classroom, in order to try out a new toy.

Right before Christmas, I bought an Apple TV. One of the factors in my decision was the ability to mirror content wirelessly from Macs, iPads, and iPhones--a feature Apple calls AirPlay. On Christmas eve, we streamed 3,000 or so family photos from Tonja's iPad to the LED television in the family room while the holiday music played and we all enjoyed the grand kids rampage through the wrapping paper. I started thinking, though, about other uses for the Apple TV at work, and on Friday I implemented the trial run.

I wanted to run a presentation, and then demonstrate and train on some applications that require a computer (CrimeView Dashboard), an iPad and an iPhone (CrimeView NEARme). So during the lunch break I hooked up my Apple TV to the big monitor in the conference room. During the afternoon session, I moved back and forth mirroring the content from a MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone--wirelessly, seamlessly, and with nothing more than a swipe. Had I thought about it, I could have had the students with iPhone 4S or 5 (about half) do the same thing, and we could have passed control of the content on the big screen around to our hearts' content.

I've put a kit together with a spare power cord and HDMI cord, so I can steal the Apple TV from the family room without having to snake cords from behind the entertainment center. It seems to me that this would be a terrific setup for a college instructor or someone like me that does a lot of business presentations or training sessions.  Your iPad becomes a full-featured wireless presentation pad, allowing you to roam at will, hand it off to anyone else, and even trade off control of the content with other devices in the room. Actually, it's far more than a presentation device, because you can do much more than navigate among slides: you can switch applications, surf the web, and interact just as if you were standing at a computer hard-wired to a projector. Apple's presentation software, Keynote, works very well with this set up. I can open a PowerPoint stored in Dropbox, Keynote converts the format automatically, and I can run it from my iPhone or iPad mini while wandering. It looks just as good as if I had done it from a laptop on the podium tethered to the projector.

The caveat is that all the devices and the Apple TV must be on the same WiFi network, and it's HDMI out, so you need a monitor or projector with HDMI in. In a room with an HDMI projector and WiFi, this just beats the pants off a laptop and a long VGA cord. One other thing I've noticed about my Apple devices is how easily they all seem to work with various LCD projectors when using standard VGA. For years I've wrestled trying to get projectors to recognize laptops. The drill is to show up to your room 20 minutes early, futz around with resolution settings, graphics properties, and Ctrl-F8 until your hands are sweaty and the audience is fidgeting waiting for an image. Not with Apple. Plug it in, and it just works.

Off the grid

Earlier this week, I spotted a small group of officers in the Criminal Investigations Team gathered around an iPad.  You know me, a knot of cops around an iPad was irresistible.  Turns out the iPad belonged to an 18 year old runaway, and the officers were brainstorming about how to use Find my iPhone to track the current location of her MacBook.  Our missing person had skipped town with her laptop, but left her phone and tablet behind, which were provided to the investigators by her parents.

It turns out that our missing person had changed her Apple ID while on the lam, thwarting the attempt to easily track her with her own iPad. Good thinking.  We tried Facetiming her (and her boyfriend) without success, too.  She was not, however, entirely off the grid.

My experience is that the parents of a runaway are almost always very, very worried.  They are often convinced--beyond all logic--that their incorrigible child with a history of splitting has now actually been kidnapped and is being held against her will. I understand the fear.  This is your baby, after all, and though incredibly rare, there really are those occasional cases that put a lump in your throat. It should, however, be comforting to know that your abducted child is still updating Facebook, and making $2 purchases at convenience stores halfway across the country. Kidnappers will generally force you to buy a little more snack food than that.

So far this year, Lincoln police officers have investigated 886 missing person reports. It's a huge job.  The chance encounter with the investigator seeking assistance from some colleagues just reminded my how much these investigations have changed within the very recent past, as technology has become ubiquitous that makes it almost impossible for a teenager (and most adults) to fall off the grid for very long.

Panoramic crime scenes

You've seen them: panoramic photos of the hotel lobby, a vacation rental, or the interior of a new car you are scoping out on the manufacturer's website.  Panoramic photos are just popping up everywhere these days. I blogged about this a couple of years ago, marveling at the work of a local Lincoln firm (roundus.com), and wondering what the future would hold for panoramic photography in emergency services.

At the time, I was thinking about panoramic photography as a great means of establishing situational awareness for police officers, firefighters, and emergency responders.  I though such imagery would be great for high-risk facilities such as government buildings, arenas, schools, critical infrastructure, and the like.  I pictured a library of panoramas that a SWAT team commander, battalion chief, or incident commander could consult during a protracted critical incident.

What I wasn't really thinking about at the time, however, was preserving information about crime scenes or fatal traffic crash scenes through panoramic photography.  A couple months ago, though, I found a new iPad app, TourWrist, that made me think about this application. TourWrist leverages the gyroscope in an iPad or iPhone, so you can navigate within a panoramic photo by moving or rotating the device.  It is a very immersive experience.  Next time you see someone holding their iPad over their head and looking up at it, or holding it at arms length and dancing in a tight circle, I'll wager they are using TourWrist to check out the ceiling of some opera house, or the landscape of some ancient ruins. It was my experience goofing around with this application that caused me to pause and think about scene photography.

Last week, I discovered something even more immersive and interactive: panoramic video.  The sample videos from GoPano.com (especially playing in their iPad application) simply blew me away.  I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around this: it's as if you are inserted right into the video, able not only to rewind, review, and repeat, but to control the point of view within the full 360 degree range of motion.  What a great way of re-examining a scene, or presenting its appearance to those who were not there to see it live.

There is no doubt in my mind that panoramic photography and panoramic video will be hugely influential in the future of crime and crash scene investigation.

I'm predicting this

In the past year, I have blogged a few times about the concept of predictive policing: using data and information to get out in front of crime and disorder--hopefully with a prevention or early intervention strategy.  It is a way of thinking that comes pretty naturally to Lincoln police employees, who have been immersed in information and involved in proactive policing for a good long while.

Early last week, I was representing the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA) by helping to staff their exhibit at the huge annual police chiefs' chiefs conference.  Although I wasn't planning on making any presentations at the conference, I was pressed into service at the last minute by a colleague from Arlington, Texas: Jim Mallard.  Jim supervises the Crime Analysis Unit at the Arlington PD, and he was scheduled for one of the principal presentations at the conference, along with Chief T. Bowman.  Chief Bowman had been delayed in Arlington in the aftermath of the Texas Ranger's league championship.  How would you like to have the Super Bowl and the World Series in your City during the same year?

I was happy to fill in.  Fortunately I have been writing about predictive policing lately, so I had some thoughts in mind, and all went well.  You can read a little bit about the session Jim and I presented here. The session was interpreted live in several languages, and I'm hoping that some of the colloquialisms I used mad sense in Spanish, French, and Portuguese.  I got a good laugh recently when I used the phrase "madder than a wet hen", which I incorrectly thought was a pretty universal expression. 

Back to Chief Bowman:  I encountered him several weeks ago working email, reading documents, surfing the web, checking the news, and keeping in touch with the office via an Apple iPad tethered to a Sprint Overdrive.  He's the first chief I've seen managing his communications with an iPad, just like me. I'm predicting this in policing: the tablet computer is going to overtake current police mobile data computers rather quickly.  It is a natural for police officers, and makes more sense than the hardened docked laptops that presently rule the transmission hump.  Give me a vehicle docking solution for the iPad and a grab-and-go case with a hand strap, and the tablet makes perfect sense for police officers who are in and out of vehicles and buildings all day long.  It won't be too long before the vendors of police mobile data applications figure this out and design their products for this form factor.

Brief me where I am

Every day at Lincoln Fire & Rescue, a short conference phone call is held, connecting all the fire stations.  Special events, assignments, upcoming training, and similar information is exchanged in about 10 minutes. 
Ten times every day, a similar briefing is held at Lincoln Police Department HQ.  It happens 10 times daily because of the variety of overlapping shift schedules.  It’s the same kind of information as at LF&R, with some highlights added about such things as recent crimes and persons-of-interest.

Beginning in the summer of 2005, LPD started using web conferencing (gotomeeting.com) to conduct the shift briefing, as a means of getting the content of the duty commander’s computer monitor out to the substations where around 95 employees begin their workday.  It has worked splendidly.  No one really needs to see the shift commander’s smiling face, but everyone needs to see the photo of the stolen 2009 Mitsubishi Eclipse, the map of the most recent street robberies, and the mug shot of the dangerous suspect that is on the loose.

This year, as we have been deploying our new location-based services application, P3i, we have also been loading gotomeeting’s mobile application on the iPhones and iPads.  With a broadband connection on your laptop, or with an iPhone or iPad, you can join the shift briefing (we call it “lineup”) remotely.  I’ve been doing that regularly for years on my laptop from home or on the road, but about a year ago I switched mostly to using the iPad app.  The latest version works on both iPad and iPhone, and I tried it out this week for the first time on my phone.  It worked fine, and the small screen was not much of an issue for the types of things Capt. Jim Davidsaver was covering during the briefing. 

Daily shift briefings like this are occurring nationwide (actually, worldwide) in police departments.  I predict that in the future, lineup will be a quaint anachronism, and the virtual meeting or web conference will be the primary means by which this information exchange is accomplished.  It just makes sense. 

Tips for using PulsePoint

If you've downloaded PulsePoint, good for you. If not, I wish you'd consider doing so. We blew by my initial goal of 1,200 over the weekend and cracked 2,400 followers last night, which is mighty encouraging. There are a couple of features in PulsePoint I want to point out that I think might be of particular interest, completely apart from the CPR-needed-in-public-place alert that is its primary purpose.

The first is the public safety radio feed. Down at the bottom of the list of recent dispatches is a red tab. Tap it, and it slides up to reveal a toggle to turn the radio feed on and off. Its pretty nice, when you see a big event, to toggle on the radio for a few minutes to listen to the transmissions. You can usually figure out quickly whether it's a big deal or not. The feed is actually stereo: fire & rescue on the right, police on the left. If you use earbuds, you'll get the separation. I use a Bluetooth connection to send the audio to my car stereo, which is really slick. The balance control allows me to emphasize and/or mute one or the other if I wish, and the left-right separation actually lets you make sense of both at the same time.

The second feature is the ability to set alerts for other kinds of calls, like structure fires and hazmat incidents. I particularly like the alerts for vehicle accident and expanded vehicle accident. These calls are the injury traffic crashes to which Lincoln Fire & Rescue responds. The expanded collisions are the ones with multiple patients, severity or where the mechanism of injury is more dangerous, such as an overturned vehicle, a car-motorcycle collision, and so forth.

The expanded injury crashes involve several emergency vehicles, unlike your typical fender-bender. Thus, setting an alert for one or both of these accident types will give you advance notice of a potential traffic snarl. These alerts will usually arrive on your phone even before the dispatcher has had the opportunity to speak the words needed to send the first responders. In PulsePoint, go to settings, and you'll see the list of incident types you can choose from for alerts on your phone.

Here's a few more tips to consider:

• Didn't sign up for CPR alerts because you haven't had training in a while? No problem, the American Heart Association can teach you the basics in 90 seconds. There are other ways to help at a cardiac arrest, too: look for the AED, wait outside to show the paramedics the way, comfort the family, etc..  Don't let the fact that you're not carrying a card in your wallet keep you from being the one.

• CPR alerts will only be received when the incident is at a public place and you are within a quarter mile. All the other alerts, though, are not tied to your location--you will get those on fires, crashes, hazmat, and so forth regardless of where you are.

• You can follow other agencies, for example a city to which you are traveling, or your Mom's home town--as long as it is a PulsePoint-connected community.

• While hands-only CPR is easy, more training is always a good thing. The Red Cross offers lots of opportunities for individuals, and if you're an employer or the team leader, maybe you should sponsor one for everybody!

• Too many alerts bothering you? I'd suggest picking only CPR and Expanded Vehicle Accident to reduce the volume and still get the ones that are most important. Also, find the "do not disturb" setting on your phone, and select those times of day that you do not want to be buzzed.

• Do you tweet? If so, the PulsePoint foundation has a twitter feed that republishes all the CPR alerts that are sent out from agencies nationwide, which is rather interesting to see @1000livesaday.

• If you happen to have an Apple Watch, these notifications will work very well on your wrist.

• PulsePoint is a smartphone app, but it will run on your iPad. It's a bit tricky to find it in the app store: you'll need to search for PulsePoint (it is NOT the blue Elevon app), then tap the "iPad Only" link at the top left and change to "iPhone only."

• PulsePoint AED is a companion app for crowdsourcing information about AEDs in the community. The icon looks the same, but is yellow. Information from the public helps us keep the data current, and we appreciate your contribution to the database!

Maps dissapoint

Over the weekend, I updated my small personal fleet of Apple products to the latest operating system, iOS 6. I figure it is always best to stay up with software updates, so I bit the bullet.  After playing with Siri on my iPad 3 for a few minutes, I concluded that it was remarkably accurate, but sort of a solution in search of a problem.  I might use it occasionally. I liked the Do Not Disturb feature a lot, though, which will prevent my devices from buzzing all night, but still allow important calls through.

Apple's new Maps application had been getting quite a bit of buzz in the pre-release press, with gushing reviews of its turn-by-turn navigation and Flyover mode. As a GIS geek, that was the feature that I was most interested in checking out. When I opened it for a little exploration, though, it looked like a considerable downgrade to me.  I soon learned that I was not alone: the Internet was a-twitter with map-savvy users complaining about it's inaccuracies, omissions, and problems.

Posting oddities from Apple's Maps app has blossomed into something of an Internet sport in the past few days, and there are plenty of example from Lincoln.  Whittier Junior High School closed 35 years ago, in 1977.  Hayward Elementary School closed 30 years ago, in 1982.  Despite the label in Apple's Maps app, there is no such place as Hatfield Elementary School in the College View neighborhood or anywhere else in the City, and there never has been. There is a Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial and it is indeed a National Park, but it is not on the corner of Jefferson and South Streets, not in the City of Lincoln, nor in the State of Nebraska.

I found lots of other examples around town.  Southwest High School, which opened ten years ago, is missing entirely; but Bethany School, closed for three decades, is still depicted on the map.  Apple apparently didn't get the memo about the State Fair moving to Grand Island, or the skating pond at 15th and Lake Street being drained more than 30 years ago, and they must have forgot about Stransky Park--one of the same neighborhood's real gems.

All these little oddities are amusing, but they have little impact on how I use maps.  The accuracy of streets is pretty good, which is the main need in public safety.  The reason I was most disappointed with the new Maps application was the loss of Google's remarkable Streetview, which I use often, and the lower resolution aerial imagery compared to its predecessor. High-quality imagery is great for firefighters and police officers, and the new application is a step in the wrong direction.  As an example, here is the playground at Antelope park, Apple on the left, Google on the right.

The loss of Streetview and the downgrade in the imagery is not offset by the much-touted Flyover mode, which has extremely limited coverage.  I don't live and work in Las Vegas or New York City, and for my purposes, it's hard to beat the Pictometry images in Bing maps' Birdseye View at the present time.

Explanations abound

Okay, I know I have been going a little haywire with posts about Lincoln's watering restrictions, but it has temporarily solved my problem with writer's block.  I promise to exercise a little more self control after this one, and try to bring a little variety back to the Director's Desk.

Several people, including the Big Guy, have asked me why so many folks seem to be having trouble following the watering schedule.  The violators are few (at least in comparison to the population), and the explanations many, dominated by "I didn't know," "I forgot," "I was fuzzy about the schedule," and "I don't know how to operate by automatic sprinklers."

I have been reading a few reports from time to time, but just got the bug Sunday night, pulled out the iPad, and read some more. I thought I'd share some of the explanations, by excerpting officers' reports--protecting identities, of course. With few exceptions, these are good citizens, with whom I empathize, but who nonetheless failed to follow the law.

WIFE'S FAULT
"Def. said he and his wife were equally responsible for the sprinklers, but he thought she had reprogrammed them to run on the correct days."

HUSBAND'S FAULT
"As I issued her the citation she angrily said it should be her husband getting the ticket since he was the one who turned on the water.  Photos were taken and placed in property."

FAMILY'S FAULT
"Def. showed ofc. the controller, which was set to 'Auto'.  Def. insisted that he had turned it to 'Off', and that someone from his family must have messed with it. Def. was cited and released."

GIRLFRIEND'S FAULT
"Officer arrived at 0944 hrs and observed a sprinkler watering the lawn. Def was contacted and stated that he believed his girlfriend may have started the water last evening (on the correct day for watering) and they both forgot about it and it was probably watering all night. Def cited and released."

DAD'S FAULT
"I was dispatched on a water violation.  I arrived and observed the sprinkler system was on in front of this address. Def. stated she did not know her system was on and thought her father had reset the system for her."

OFFICER'S FAULT
"She was not happy to receive an official citation as she had heard that people were receiving warnings and no one had come to 'warn' her about violating the watering restrictions."

ANY TWO DAYS
"She stated she knew the city currently had outdoor watering restrictions, but said she thought the provision was that residents could only water two days a week, on any two days they chose. Def. was advised of the particulars of the current watering restrictions, and was cited and released."

STILL CONFUSED
"Ofc. contacted def. who was the manager on duty at the time of the offense. She said that she had already been ticketed on Monday and was confused about when the should be watering. Ofc. explained how to determine the proper date to water by address. Def. was cited/released."

JUST BECAUSE IT'S A RUMOR DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT REALLY TRUE
"She said she had heard 'rumors' about watering restrictions in the city, but had not made an attempt to learn the details. Def. was informed of the specifics of the restrictions, shown how to turn off her lawn sprikler system, and was cited and released."

OUT OF THE LOOP
"Owner was contacted and she stated she did not know we were in a drought and that there was a water restriction in place. I advised her that we have been in this emergency water restriction for almost a month now and that information was being given through numerous news outlets. She stated she did not know there was a restriction and suggested that the city find another way to inform its citizens of it."

REALLY OUT OF THE LOOP
"She said she had no idea there was a watering restriction because she doesn't have a TV, radio, the internet or take the newspaper. She was cited for the violation."

I THINK WE'LL BE BACK
"Def. was advised of the violation that he was in and he immediately stated that he was unaware of the complete ban on Mondays. He stated that he doesn't watch TV, but I observed his large screen TV to be on as he made the statement. After I issued his citation he stated that he will be watering his back yard everyday because he has a tall privacy fence and no one will be able to see that he is watering. Def. disclosed that he works for ________, maintaining customers' lawns, but still had no idea that there was no watering on Mondays."

THAT'S ODD
"I was sent to 1611 ________  regarding a water restriction violation...Def. said she thought her house counted as even numbered because it started with 16. I corrected her that her address was an odd number and her days to water were Tues, Thurs and Sat. She was then cited/released for a water restriction violation."

THAT'S NOT ODD
"I was dispatached to 610 ________ on a watering complaint. As I walked up the driveway I obs the def sitting outside on his driveway.  He asked if I was there because of his watering.  Def said he thought since the address ended in a zero that it was an odd day and he was okay to water. Def. was cited and released."

IT MUST BE WEDNESDAY SOMEWHERE
"Def. said she got up this morning & thought it was a Wednesday so she manually started the underground sprinklers. Def. now realized that it was Tuesday."

NO PROBLEM, WE'LL WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE HOME.  NO, REALLY.
"He said an officer could stop by after that time to issue the citation and said the officer could call first to see if he was home. I asked def. if his wife would be home prior to his return because she could be issued the citation instead of him. Def. said he is the one who set the controller for the sprinkler system in error. He also said that he would rather be shot than have to deal with his wife getting the citation."

SET IT AND FORGET IT
"Def. said that the sprinklers had been set years ago and he had no idea when the sprinklers are set to come on. Def. was cited and released."

NO CHARGE FOR THIS SERVICE CALL
"Def. was shown how to turn his sprinkler system to 'OFF' and was cited and released."

BEST SOLUTION YET
"I made contact with def. who advised she knew she couldn't water her lawn on Monday but forgot.  After being informed she would be receiving a citation, she stated, 'I'll just turn the  %$#@*&!  things off.'  Def. was cited/released."

Most valuable perspective

I've just concluded a workshop presentation to several dozen colleagues from around the country on the value of Pictometry's oblique aerial imagery for public safety personnel, such as fire battalion chiefs, police officers, dispatchers and emergency management personnel. Many people are familiar with Pictometry images through Microsoft's Bing Maps. The public imagery available through Bing, however, is not the latest-and-greatest. In Lincoln, these are 2010 images, whereas the 2013 photos we use internally are more recent and taken at even higher resolution.

The workshop was at the request of Pictometry for their annual users' conference. Many of the municipal and county customers of the firm are such people as county assessors and city GIS managers. Apparently in some communities where the city or county have already spent the money to acquire this imagery for such purposes as tax assessment, it isn't necessarily being used by the public safety agencies.

To me, it is a no-brainer. Neither standard overhead aerial photography, nor street-level imagery such as Google's Streetview, quite fills the bill as well as the bird's eye view from Pictometry's oblique images. Whether planning the service of a high-risk arrest warrant, preparing for the potential of a significant working incident, or managing a large special event, the oblique aerial view is quite helpful, and provides the most valuable perspective.

I could sense the topic was timely. My session was well-attended by people who wanted some advice on how to engage their police department, fire department, sheriff's office, 911 center, and emergency management personnel. Many of the attendees wanted to talk in more detail after the session, and I spent an afternoon sipping coffee and brainstorming with people from Virginia to Colorado, and points in between. One of suggestions I made to these existing Pictometry customers was to download the iOS app for iPad, Pictometry Connect Mobile, then to simply hand that to a SWAT team commander or a bat chief. A picture is sometimes worth a thousand words, and these are personnel I would expect to be most likely to understand immediately how this technology could help.

Good things in small places

Kevin Sands is the police chief in Waverly, Virginia. He heads a department of seven in his small town. Waverly is a far more typical police force than Lincoln. In the United States, 90% of police agencies employ fewer than 50 officers, and half employ less than 10.

I met Chief Sands and his sergeant, Willie Richards, in San Diego last week, where I was unveiling our new location-based services application to a national audience of police technologists. Waverly and Lincoln shared a conference session. I presented about P3i, then Kevin and Willie followed with a presentation about how they are using Apple iPads to bring some great information technology to their small force.

Just as I have found a lot of uses for my iPad at work, so has the Waverly Police Department, and they've leveraged the applications very well, equipping their officers with some resources that would be the envy of big-city cops. Kevin had a nice set of Keynote slides demonstrating a variety of applications they are using for everything from language translation to report writing. Willie has hand crafted some very clever vehicle mounts with an articulating arm, by grafting together parts from a couple of sources.

I was impressed, as were others. There is a tendency to look towards large agencies for innovation and in research in policing.  I am convinced, however, that lots of great ideas bubble up in small agencies which have a key advantage over the big cities: they are more agile. Small agencies, though facing plenty of challenges, can often turn on a dime and implement innovative ideas quickly and well. By comparison, the big agency has a tougher time responding to change or opportunity.

There is probably a sweet spot at the nexus between large-enough-to-have-resources and small-enough-to-be-nimble. That's a good place to look for innovative and creative work, but don't ever count out the small places like Waverly, Virginia.

Impulse purchase pans out

In technology terms, 2010 was a long time ago. Back then, I was an early adopter of the original Apple iPad, and quickly found that it was a useful device at work. I admit it: I have a problem with gadgets. My smartphone habit goes way back to the Palm OS, and my handheld organizers even earlier. I had made up my mind, though, that there was no way I was buying an Apple Watch. And then....

A couple Sundays ago, I accompanied my lovely wife and daughter to the mall in Omaha. Ugh. There's nothing for a man there, and only a couple options that won't cause downright pain. I debated, then zigged left to the Apple Store, rather than zagging right to Scheel's. I found myself ogling Apple Watches instead of bicycle accessories and fly rods. 

I suppose I was ripe for the picking. I've always been a watch-wearer, and the Apple Watch proved to be less bulky in person than it looked in photos. The friendly associate said, "You should try it on." I swallowed hook, line, and sinker. A few minutes later I stumbled out the door, dazed, carrying a little white bag. They just make it too doggone easy. 

After a couple of weeks, I actually like my impulse purchase. It's great to get notifications on my Apple Watch of incoming text messages and emails. I don't have to dig for my iPhone. I can discretely glance at my watch during meetings without disrupting things. At home, my iPhone can stay on counter or plugged into the charger,  but I can still get check my emails and messages while puttering in the garage or out on the deck, or just kicked-back across the room.

I've only answered one phone call on my Apple Watch. It worked fine on both ends of the call, although I was alone in a quiet room at the time. I was hoping no one would walk by and see me channelling Dick Tracy. (How badly does this reference date me?)

The Apple Watch experience has me thinking about more sophisticated public safety applications for wearable technology. At one time, I thought Google Glass might be a breakthrough in this regard. Now, I think the smartwatch has good potential for doing things like delivering the patient's vital signs to the paramedic's wrist; or the tornado warning, the wanted bulletin, and the critical incident alert. I can see the potential of location-based information like that served up from P3i,  delivered to the user on a wearable device.

It's not just a pipe dream. I already have an application that sends notifications to me about certain types of major incidents. I get the alerts to my iPhone and now on my Apple Watch, too. It tickles my wrist to let me know of an emergency response like this one on Wednesday, and it usually does so several seconds before the 911 center has even been able to say the words on the radio necessary to dispatch the responders to the incident. You'll be hearing more about this on my blog and in the local news in coming weeks.

Pretty impressive

I do occasional presentations at conferences or trainings on various subjects, and sometimes you wonder whether you've actually said anything useful or interesting. Every now and then though, you get some feedback that makes you feel pretty good: you've sparked a thought, seeded an idea, or helped someone else.

This article in the Lexington Clipper Herald last Friday was one of those moments, and made me smile. This was the subject of my post, iPad Advice, just before Christmas. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment, Lexington PD, in a matter of weeks. Small departments like Lexington (150 miles west down Interstate 80) can do some pretty cool stuff, and often faster than their bigger siblings, because although they may be small, they are also nimble.

Map happy

Most readers know that I am a bit of a GIS wonk.  I now have my hands on a new set of data, and a new range of questions.  Capt. Julio Talero is the GIS analyst at Lincoln Fire & Rescue, but I can’t help by dabbling a little myself on the weekends.  I leave the heavy lifting to him, but I can play a little, too.

In preparation for a meeting last week, I prepared a few simple slides for my iPad. Capt. Talero provided me with a set of four-minute travel time polygons.  Using ESRI’s ArcGIS and Network Analyst extension, he created these polygons, which represent coverage areas from each fire station within four minutes of hypothetical travel time: hypothetical because the method uses the speed limit of each street segment to perform the calculation.  In the real world, you don’t get a running start, your acceleration is not exactly like a Cobra 429, and there are plenty of motorists who either can’t hear your siren over their music, or freeze up in the inside lane.
 
This first map shows the location of the stations, and the four-minute polygon surrounding. There is a lot of overlap, and these 14 polygons are opaque: they are layered over or under the adjacent station’s four minute area. 


Overlap is good if it’s located in the right place: the areas where you are most likely to have a high volume of calls for service. If you want to have a reasonable response time to every address in the City, you have to consider both proximity to the fire station, AND the likelihood that the resources at that station are already committed.  In a busy area, the resources are more likely to be occupied elsewhere, so the response is not coming from the closest station anyway.  Here’s another map depicting the overlap areas:
 
In this map, each of the 14 polygons is shaded pink and semi-transparent.  As four-minute travel time areas overlap, the visual effect is that the color becomes more and more opaque—a hotter shade of pink.

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.

Be prepared

The Lincoln Public Schools has launched a new application to provide its staff and emergency responders with updated situational awareness information about each of its schools and facilities.  The system, developed with assistance from a U.S. Department of Education Readiness & Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) grant, was developed by a contractor, SafePlans.  I attended a kickoff training session yesterday, along with other staff from LPD and LF&R

The system is called Emergency Response Information (ERIP), and provides data such as area maps, aerial photographs, floor plans, exit locations, utility shutoffs, hazardous materials locations, and digital imagery of the interior and exterior of each site.  This is all good information, and it is nicely packaged.  The site is designed for simple navigation, and does not require any uncommon plug-ins or helper applications.  It runs fine in IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Safari's iPad edition, and the webkit browser on my Android tablet.  Like many such systems these days, it is a secure web application.  Here's the problem with web applications for emergency preparedness: in an emergency, there is a fair possibility the Internet will be unavailable:  power may be out, data centers offline, backhaul cut, wireless services overwhelmed.  

We have experienced all of these to varying degrees with three comparatively minor crises during my tenure as police chief: We had a fiber optic line cut between the County City Building and the Law Enforcement Center that effeectively severed computer communications with police headquarters and the 911 Center.  We experienced a water main break at the County City Building that took out the entire building for four months.  We had a huge early season snow storm that took out power to over 100,000 citizens for up to a week, and crippled both landline and cellular telephone.  These are nothing of the scale of an F4 tornado, a Category 4 hurricane, or a major earthquake.

If your eggs are all in the basket of an Internet/Intranet solution for preparedness, you may not be prepared.  That's why I was very pleased to see that ERIP also provided a low-tech "offline" variant.  If the cool web version is inaccessible, you've got the backup on a memory stick and still provides critical information with nothing more than a working laptop and a generator for an occasional recharge.  Keep it fairly current with an update at least every year and you will have a good sturdy belt in the event your suspenders fail.  

Mobile oblique imagery

By now, I suspect readers understand that oblique aerial imagery has some real value for public safety personnel.  When the chips are down, however, you may need that data quickly, with a minimal amount of futzing, and without access to the computer back on your desktop. I am convinced that in public safety technology, the future lies in applications optimized for mobile data computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Oblique imagery dips a toe in this water now, and the mobile tools will continue to evolve. Here are a few examples. The first image is the historic Kennard House in Lincoln, depicted in this screenshot from my iPad mini running Pictometry Connect Mobile. The second image is the same scene, on my iPhone using CrimeView NEARme.

The next big deal in mobile imagery is location-based services: delivering the images to you based on your mobile device's known location. In the world of tech today applications must be mobile, and this is particularly true in public safety where the workforce is mobile and the incidents dynamic. Pictometry Connect Mobile and CrimeView NEARme are already location aware: a tap centers the map on your current location. Not far off will be the next evolution of this concept, putting the images in motion with the user, perhaps even orienting the viewpoint based on the device's direction of travel, providing more of a sensation of moving through the image without any need by the user to reorient the viewpoint.

Number 1,000

This will be the 1,000th post on my blog, which began on April 10, 2007. I remember back at the beginning, when someone made a comment that 99% of blogs don't survive a year. In honor of 1,000 posts, I'm taking it light on the blogging next week. Someone in my immediate household is celebrating a big birthday, and I'm planning a little R&R for her.

If you need a little reading during my sabbatical, though, here's an option: I was looking at Google Analytics this morning, and these are the 10 most popular posts, in order.  Some of these are well-aged, so Iwouldn't be surprised if some of the internal hyperlinks have gone dead over the years.

Share the road
Police iPad
Exemplary planning and execution
I wonder who drove
Criminal History
Gary got his gun permit
Life well lived
Outside the bubble
Sure sign of spring
Not making this up