Taking electronic notes for police to a new level allowing evidential integrity to maintain from the moment of a violation to disclosure of evidence at trail.

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, December 30, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Note-taking is as much a part of a police officer’s duty as working their beat or patrolling crime hotspots. Without proper note-taking, evidence is lost. Human memory isn’t reliable enough.

Multiple factors must be in place to establish efficiency and the integrity of the notes taken, including:

- The transforming of those paper notes into a digital format.
- Inserting the unaltered notes into the police force’s RMS—Record Management System—for them to be available at trial.
- The speed at which this can be done, particularly vital when a large-scale investigation is ongoing and multiple investigators at different locations require access to unaltered notes ASAP.

Failure to maintain integrity for notes can often mean the difference between prosecution and not.

It is not the practice of taking notes itself that is antiquated, it is the way it is being done.

THE ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAPER NOTES
For nearly 150 years, law enforcement agencies in Canada have been recording their administrative duties, evidence, case notes, and calls for service on paper notebooks.

This is the typical procedure of how paper note-taking works:

- Officers log their shift details in a paper notebook.
- When a call goes to 911, the dispatcher pushes the call details into an MDT (mobile data terminal) in the police vehicle. The officer then manually copies the dispatch details into his/her notebook.
- During and after the call, the officer completes the notes in the paper notebook.
- At the end of the shift, the officer has to hand in the notebook to their supervisor for review.
- At the police station, the officer has to manually scan the handwritten notes from the notebook into the RMS.
- From the RMS, the notes get attached to reports for disclosure to the court.

If that glacial process wasn’t slow enough, the problem can often be exacerbated by:
- Bad handwriting
- Missing pages
- Missing notes

“E-NOTES” ON THEIR OWN ARE NOT A COMPLETE SOLUTION
The solution might seem simple: “Take the notes digitally.” But if it were that simple, the problem would’ve been solved years ago.

It wasn’t.

Although the solution does lie in the realm of taking electronic notes, the software available for this so far has fallen way off the mark.

The first problem is security, and it is an enormous problem. In the face of the current onslaught of data breaches over the last ten years, an entirely new solution was needed to prevent digital police notes from being destroyed, corrupted, or altered in any way.

INTELLIGENT MOBILE PATROL (IMP)—A BREAKTHROUGH IN LAW ENFORCEMENT TECHNOLOGY
Intelligent Mobile Patrol electronic notes for police is a digital solution that embraces and resolves all of the above problems.

Developed by officers and for officers, IMP is a turnkey solution to help police officers with all of their duties.

Using IMP, the cumbersome procedure of law enforcement note-taking is transformed from the clunky and error-prone process above to the following:
- When using IMP, the 911 dispatch details get pushed automatically into the IMP app on the officer’s phone.
- There is no longer any need for the officer to copy the person’s details, such as driver’s license, manually into the proper forms. All the data is automatically imported into the appropriate forms within the app.
- The officer has all forms related to the incident/investigation at their fingertips.
- There is no delay in getting the notes into the station’s RMS. The officer simply presses a button in the IMP app, and the data is automatically sent over to the RMS.
- The instant transfer of unaltered e-notes to the RMS has the added benefit of making them immediately available to supervisors and investigators. This speeds up investigations and can mean the difference between a perpetrator getting away or being brought to justice swiftly.

MAKING POLICE-WORK MORE EFFICIENT
Intelligent Mobile Patrol is not only about note-taking. It is an entire suite of digital tools necessary to assist officers to carry out all their duties. Its purpose is to make the environment safer for citizens by helping police forces do their job better.

To that end, the application offers numerous additional features. Including:
- Speech-to-text feature.
- Immediate access to documentation and resources.
- The ability to attach sketches, and photos to notes.
- The ability to work offline when officers are in remote locations.
- Officers can search the notes database to look at old notes.
- BRAIDMARK^® —the patent-pending security feature developed by Digital Mobility Inc., integrated into IMP—allows courts to immediately verify an officer’s notes through a unique QR code validation process.
- Officers can begin a note on their mobile devices and then finish it off on their PC at the office.
- Complete integration with CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch).
- Arrest forms and all other necessary forms.

In short, every essential element of a police officer's job has been thought of by officers who did their own duties for years and know what their fellow officers run into.

INVESTIGATOR VERSION
There is also a version of IMP that is made specifically for investigators.

Currently, investigators carry two paper notebooks. One is used for general calls—the same notebook that officers carry. The second is used for investigations.

IMP integrates both of these notebooks into the app. This way, investigators can start a case, add case notes, and then instantly link intelligence gathered by other investigators to their ongoing case.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
The impact on the environment from switching to digital is significant. If Canada’s 68,000+ police officers all write an average of 10 notes a day on (a modest estimate), that works out to:
- 680,000 notes a year or
- 170,000 A4 sheets of paper or
- 17 pine trees of over 45 feet!

Considering that pine trees grow only one to two feet a year, that’s at least 22½ years of forest growth destroyed on an outdated system that is prone to flaws.

Amir A.
Digital Mobility Inc.
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IMP Electronic Notes for Police