Case Histories › Thames Valley Police

Linking police and public more efficiently

Thames Valley Police is one of the biggest police forces in England and Wales. In common with many other forces, it has recently rolled out neighbourhood policing in order to forge closer links with local communities and tackle those issues that local people have identified as a priority. The newly-formed neighbourhood policing teams consist of police officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who serve 265 neighbourhood communities across Oxfordshire, East and West Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Communications requirement.

The essence of neighbourhood policing is direct contact between members of the public and known local officers. A central part of the Thames Valley Police communications strategy has been to set up a single telephone number for non-emergency calls from the public which are fielded through call handling centres staffed by police support staff. The communications system is required to ensure the link between the central call centre and locally known officers.

Solution

An Autopage Email Gateway server is integrated with the Force's Nortel Call Pilot voicemail system to allow non-emergency calls to be routed to the voice mail box of individual police officers - based on their shoulder number - so callers hear the voices of the officers they have been dealing with.

The system then triggers an SMS text via the Autopage Email Gateway to the officer's personal mobile phone to say that a message is waiting.

Police officers can then call into their own voicemail message boxes from any phone in the Force, (or their mobile telephone, or from any telephone using a freephone 0808 number) using their individual user ID & password number, and pick up their messages.

"It is a very easy system to use," Alan Mitchell said. "It is literally one button and a password and is no different to picking up voicemail messages from personal mobiles at home. Any complexity in the system was driven out at the start and we give very clear guidance instructions on its operation. It is so simple it is just a very small section in our induction process."

The Email Gateway has not only enabled Thames Valley Police to improve its accessibility to the public but to also personalise its response service. "And it's managed," Alan Mitchell said. "By publishing a single number and putting calls through a screening environment, we can ensure that members of the public can speak directly to their own neighbourhood officer."

The original Autopage Email Gateway server, which has been in use for three years, has been joined by a second, installed at a separate Force Headquarters site. Telecoms Department technical specialist Alan Mitchell said two servers allow load sharing and balance and give the system resilience: "If one goes down due to power failure or for some other reason, then the other will carry on," he said.

Casualty Bureau requirement

A Casualty Bureau is set up to respond to calls from the public over incidents such as a major motorway crash. The Bureau manager may have to contact call-out staff at any time to get around 20 employees in to staff the bureau. This used to involve calling everyone individually, waiting for calls back, and if half of the staff were not available, then going on to a secondary call list until enough people had responded. "It used to be an extremely time-consuming task," Alan Mitchell said.

Solution

Now, with the Autopage Email Gateway system, the Bureau manager simply sends everyone on the list an SMS alert en bloc and within seconds the responses are flooding back in. If there are not enough respondents from the first message alert, he can quickly move on to the secondary list and get the Bureau up and running much more quickly.

"What used to take an hour to make 15 to 20 individual calls can now be done in five to ten minutes instead. It really has speeded things up and we can open a Casualty Bureau within two hours instead of four, which is much more reassuring for the members of the public who want to know what is going on and if their relatives have been involved in an incident," Alan Mitchell said.

The Autopage system has proved extremely robust and, because it is integrated into the Force's own established network, is also secure. "I don't have much contact with Autopage because the product just doesn't go wrong. In the two and a half years I have been in post, I have made a few calls to understand the system and any issues have usually been resolved by the time I have finished my phone call," Alan Mitchell said. "The after sales service is very good."

Thames Valley Police is currently looking at the possibility of developing their Autopage Email Gateway further so that they can accept incoming SMS phone calls with picture attachments to enable members of the public to phone in images of incidents as they happen - again a move aimed at increasing better police responsiveness and more community engagement.

 

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