We're located in the Saratoga County area of upstate New York, a beautiful place if there ever was one. But for testing purposes on PolicePro to Go, we wanted to put our data files on a server a good distance away, certainly a lot farther than any normal police usage would ever occur.

So Ohio, then. 474 miles off to our west, we've got a test suite of PolicePro files running 24x7 on a high quality server with a solid internet connection, and we're whaling away on it as much as we can.

So far the speed of things over a wireless connection is pretty good! 3G data speed is a little soft on the program loading - there's a lot of things that go on as far as setting user identity, setting preferences, etc... and that's what we're focusing on now.

The thing is functional right out of the barrel, but we're thinking in a few days we should be able to see some pretty good improvements.

So far, everyone we've shown it to has reacted really well. Everyone wants it, and a couple of places have ordered it up already for when it's ready to go. Encouraging!

Filemaker has hit it right out of the park with the July 22 release of Filemaker Go, the new mobile client for Apple's iPhone and iPad. Now that the secret is out, we can start talking about the next generation of PolicePro, which we've cleverly named PolicePro to Go. Nice ring to it, yes?

It is hard to overstate how big this is. Filemaker has clearly announced their intent as to the direction they're going in the future: out of the building and into the Cloud. We have been working diligently on PolicePro to Go for the iPad for some time now as well.

So what's the big fuss about?

PolicePro to Go is not intended to replace PolicePro in the station or in the patrol cars on laptops. A uniform police officer has enough to carry around without giving him or her an iPad and expecting them to bring it back in one piece after a busy shift. Just from an officer safety standpoint, it's a bad idea... patrol work can get physical unexpectedly, and an officer cannot be worrying about the six hundred dollar piece of equipment in his or her hand.

Laptops in the cars are a wonderful thing. We intend to keep it that way.

What PolicePro to Go IS for is the Chief, the Captain, the Community Relations officer, maybe the DARE officer. Not so much the working detective or investigator, for some of the same reasons listed above.

Campus safety or University PD sites might want to use them for specific tasks as well. Maybe even a Read Only version for the Dean of Students, or whoever it is the boss has to report to.

The sweet spot, as we see it, is the Chief at the Town Board or City Council meeting, a department representative at a community group meeting or a monthly Domestic Violence Panel review, a sex offender panel meeting, or the monthly regional or area Chiefs of Police meeting. Any group setting where you may be called on to explain, summarize or otherwise report on what is going on in the jurisdiction.

The iPad is absolutely perfect for this. The elegance and ease of use of these things has been well documented, but if you've never spent an hour or two with one, you just can't imagine how good and game changing they are. Put a PolicePro to Go suite on the thing and it becomes the Number One piece of equipment you have, bar none.

With PolicePro to Go and a wireless equipped iPad, you've got your department's full PolicePro data instantly available anyplace you can find a wireless network. City Hall, Dunkin Donuts, Panera, almost every airport, your home, nearly any hotel, some entire towns... you name it.

WIth a 3G equipped iPad, you can check on the status of a burglary from the previous evening from a bass boat in the middle of Upper Saranac Lake. Virtually anyplace ATT has a signal, you've got PolicePro.

Hey, what about the iPhone, you ask? While technically PolicePro to Go will run every bit as well on the iPhone, the small screen just doesn't work well with the amount of information that an average PolicePro screen needs to display. PolicePro to Go has been painstakingly written to take full advantage of the iPad display. The screens fit the display perfectly, even rotating automatically when you turn the unit from portrait to landscape orientation. Reading a long narrative report on PolicePro to Go is very similar to reading an eBook on Amazon. All the fonts, buttons and other onscreen objects have been redesigned to work and display on the iPad as you would expect them to.

We haven't given up on the iPhone - I have a client running on my own all the time these days - but if something has to go on the back burner, this would be it. Maybe we'll rethink it down the line, but the fact is that the iPad is such a perfect match for this technology it's kind of a waste of time to even think about anything else.

How many times have I prayed for the opportunity to see this happen? Didn't see it, but love reading about it. Albany Times Union, NY, 5/21/2010:

ALBANY -- A 31-year-old Crosby Street man was hospitalized Thursday night after losing control of his motorcycle while doing wheelies and slamming head first through the windshield of a parked car in West Hill, police said.

Witnesses told investigators that Karream Crenshaw, of 23 Crosby St., was riding east and doing wheelies when he lost control near 577 Third St. and swerved to the opposite side of the road and sideswiped a parked car, police said

The motorcycle then struck a second parked truck head-on, throwing Crenshaw over the handle bars and sending him face-first through the windshield, police said.
Crenshaw's helmet -- which on one side depicts the smoking barrel of a gun -- smashed through the windshield and came to rest against the car's steering wheel. Crenshaw was treated at the scene by fire department paramedics and taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital with neck injuries that police said did not appear to be life-threatening.
Detective James Miller said Crenshaw likely will face charges.

We don't always get to say who the PolicePro clients are; we do work with specialized task forces, investigative agenices and outfits that aren't clearly branded as the So And So Police Department or Hard Knocks University Campus Safety. We just completed one of these install trips - very successfully - to southern California. Greg and I got to spend a week in and around the stunning Coachella Valley, the Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage area. The people we dealt with couldn't have been better, the work was interesting and satisfying, the scenery was incredible, and the Mustang we rented was a red convertible. How can you top that?


Mountain views down Highway 111, Rancho Mirage




Dave and Greg on top of the Mt. San Jacinto Tramway




The cool, other worldly windfarms in the Banning Pass




The (temporary) Corporate Batmobile - I grew up driving these things, had forgotten how much fun they are!

I've recently become hooked on yet another emerging technology... The eBooks phenomena as delivered through Amazon's Kindle platform.

Not so much the Kindle itself... I remain unimpressed at it's design and limited versatility. But Amazon had the brilliant idea to put a Kindle application on the iPhone, and that's where I found and fell in love with it.

Amazon has added a PC based Kindle Reader as well that I can use through Parallels on my MacBook Pro... they say a native Mac version will be out shortly.

So here's what's so great about all this. Whenever I open a book on either my iPhone or my computer, the application syncs to the last point I was reading at, regardless of which device was involved. If I spent last evening in my Windows 7 virtual machine reading Clive Cussler and I now find myself at the car dealership getting my oil changed, all I need to do is open Kindle on my iPhone, select the Cussler book if need be (if it was the last one I was reading, it will automatically load) and click the Sync button.

They've put in some great user interface/interaction stuff as well. You can bookmark any page just by clicking a Plus icon on the bottom of the screen. The page will display with the top right corner turned down, a familiar enough metaphor! We've seen this in other applications, but it is great on an iPhone.

The iPhone version - which is free - also offers choices on how to view the page. My preference is Sepia, which softens the black text (which is also resizable) against a faint sepia colored background as opposed to a bright white. Weirdly, it "feels" more familiar that way, in any light.

Turning pages can either by done by dragging your finger or just tapping anywhere along the edge of the screen; right side for forward, left for back a page. It just could not be easier.

But the best part of the whole experience, where Amazon took a page from Apple's model, is the Kindle store on the iPhone. Sitting in the airport with nothing to read and a four hour flight coming up? Jump into the Kindle store on the iPhone and select just about anything either by viewing the latest releases or doing a search for title, author, whatever. Most eBooks are about $10, some less, some a bit more. Make a selection, click the button, and the book downloads damn near instantly.

Today I happened across a new Joseph Wambaugh novel that will be coming out in about two weeks. I ordered it on the spot, and on the official release date it will just appear in my Kindle library. How much better can it get?

----------------------------------------------


To add one more personal tech wrinkle to this whole thing: I've been looking around for awhile for a way to write stuff like this, or technical stuff for business, or whatever, on my iPhone. This week I've been playing around with Google Wave, and it occurred to me this morning that here was exactly what I needed. I am writing this whole thing as a new Wave to myself on my iPhone. When I go to my computer later, I can edit or just copy this text out of that Wave and stick it wherever it needs to go: in this case, into RapidWeaver, my weblog software, and it will become a blog entry in a heartbeat. Google is positioning Wave as a collaborative tool, and I'll be damned if it doesn't work great for collaborating with yourself!

I had an unexpected phone call today (Tuesday, September 8) from a truly nice woman in North Carolina informing me that a virus by the name of Police Pro had taken over her computer, which is now useless. She had called the Norton Utilities company who somehow apparently directed her to us, since (reasonably) we have a similar name - but no space between the “Police” and “Pro” words.

So some filthy, lowlife piece of crap has inflicted the world with yet another worthless virus, and this time they’ve used a name a hell of a lot like our own. While I was on the phone with the woman, trying to figure out what was going on here, I Googled “Police Pro Virus” and, sure enough, there’s hits all over the place about this new and very virulent piece of malware/adware whatever you want to call it.

IT IS NOT US. PolicePro has been around for some twelve years now, performing what every one of our clients will tell you is a vital function in their police departments. Whoever the idiot is who is perpetrating this new scam, be assured that no one would rather have their hands around his throat than we would.

Apparently this occurs when a webpage that looks a hell of a lot like a real Microsoft security window appears and tells users that their computer has been infected with one of several virus names, and directs users to click a button to safely remove that virus. As soon as you do that, you’re apparently toast... the Police Pro virus is installed on your computer, and from what I’ve read in the last several minutes, it can be a hell of a thing to remove.

There are various suggested solutions already on the Web, but be warned they all require some fairly technical familiarity with the operating system. As much as I wanted to help the woman on the phone, it became obvious pretty quickly that she was going to need some onscene, knowledgeable assistance. In her case, a nephew in the IT field is probably getting a phone call right now with the list of a few of the suggestions I read about.

So we are also victims of this outrage, in that a brand I have been building for twelve years is all of a sudden associated with all this hell. I can’t wait to see who this eventually turns out to be, and what we might be able to do about it... which is probably nothing, since the name, while close enough, is not actually the same as ours.

My complete sympathies to anyone who becomes a victim of this virus, but trust me: it does not come from Steamboat Data.

Too many hours in the office, a long, cold winter... enough already! Wednesday it’s back to Jamaica and Sandals Royal Caribbean in Montego Bay for nine days. See you on the other side.

Police officers and departments are now operating in a world where every single thing they do, individually or institutionally, is sooner or later going to be scrutinized or asked about by someone. The more we can do to help agencies and officers document things that happen - especially controversial situations - the better it is going to be for everyone.

So we arrive at Use of Force, or Response to Resistance reporting. Every agency with an interest in protecting itself as well as its officers either has or is getting ready to have Use of Force report requirements. Documenting what actually happened and why is the best insurance against a future nightmare when a defendant eventually comes back with some cooked up story about injuries he sustained, the way he was treated, or whatever.

Tied to an intelligently crafted Use of Force policy, this is your best way to deal with this lousy reality. PolicePro is going to make it easier.

PolicePro’s new Use of Force reporting is, like everything else in the system, tied directly to the incident it stems from. An officer can complete a Use of Force report in just a few minutes and get on with his or her day. All the source material he or she needs for the report is right there on the PolicePro screen. When the report is completed, a supervisor can confirm it in an instant. Cases that need reporting can be isolated in a hot second by just running a Saved Find request or requests for incident types that generally require reports.

And like other critical areas of PolicePro, Use of Force reports themselves can be restricted as to who can access or read them. The only difference is that this time, we leave the arrow icon that indicates the existance of the report or reports, so supervisors can in fact confirm they exist. The actual report content can be restricted wtih our usual Need To Know logic.

Necessary evil? Probably, though this kind of reporting can keep an officer and a department out of trouble right from the start. Worth doing? Absolutely, every time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sample Dispatch Ticket on a fictional Assault event:



Like everywhere else, clicking the Use of Force tab displays a decision window:



Click Yes, and a new Use of Force/Resistance Report pops up with the case reference information already created:



Printed output at the end:



Like everything else in PolicePro, resistance reporting (sounds better, yes?) is completely searchable. Output can be to paper or PDF.

Eleven years now and we never stop thinking about how to make PolicePro better, easier to use, and continually relevant. Force/Resistance reporting is a classic example of why PolicePro is Still The One.