Northgate helps frontline policing in Staffordshire
Northgate Public Services is helping Staffordshire Police to reduce crime by raising its visibility on the streets with the aid of the latest technology for the forces control room. The force is introducing Spirit, Northgates new Demand and Resource Management system in early June 2014, the first police force in the country to adopt Northgates new solution.
Northgate Public Services is helping Staffordshire Police to reduce crime by raising its visibility on the streets with the aid of the latest technology for the forces control room. The force is introducing Spirit, Northgates new Demand and Resource Management system in early June 2014, the first police force in the country to adopt Northgates new solution.
Northgate has considerable experience of delivering solutions that bring operational benefit into the control room through its xcDesktop GIS (geographic information system) and routing products, closely integrated with core systems such as command and control applications.
Northgate provides GIS solutions to nearly all the England and Wales police forces, including all Staffordshires neighbouring forces and the Central Motorways Policing Group.
This project is an extension of that technology, providing much closer interaction with the resources themselves by getting real-time feedback and telemetry directly from police vehicles and combining it with GPS (global positioning system) from in-car devices.
Staffordshire Polices mission is keeping communities safe and reassured and is supported by an overarching strategic priority of ensuring that local police are dealing with the things that matter to their communities.
Northgates solution will help the force to achieve its objectives and more. It takes data from the vehicle devices and then streams it for different tasks, including vehicle system alerts, pushing it into the control room for real-time monitoring and tasking of resources, providing hot spot positioning feedback to officers and logging it in central databases for performance and crime analysis purposes.
Assistant Chief Constable Julian Blazeby, project executive, said: As well as helping us to reduce crime by enabling more police time to be spent on active patrol, this new technology will lead us to be more operationally efficient and effective, so that we can deliver a high quality of service.
Being visible and accessible, providing reassurance to communities and building public confidence in the police is vital to our role in the community here in Staffordshire.
The new Demand and Resource Management solution, with the help of reports, maps and real-time deployment data, offers the force a host of benefits and advantages. These include an improvement in incident management and the effectiveness of frontline staff, giving officers more time out of the station to focus on key tasks and offering reassurance to the public.
We chose Northgate because it builds on software we are already using, so that we could be confident that it would interface with our existing systems.
Project manager Stewart Meikle, a chartered engineer, added: This project breaks new ground in policing. This is a technically innovative project which gives high added value through the use of standard equipment, linked together by clever code and rigorous system design. Northgate has assembled a capable team that works well with us to maximise the value of the system.
Ian Blackhurst, Northgates Executive Director, Solutions, said: Northgate brings together years of experience from a number of disciplines to culminate in being able to provide the products and services to allow forces to become more streamlined, while being able to act efficiently and effectively to service public demand.
We are pleased to be able to provide these solutions to Staffordshire Police, which will provide them with a range of benefits, not least of which are a reduction in crime and increased public reassurance through greater police activity and visibility.
About Northgate Public Services
Northgate Public Services has a wealth of experience of delivering solutions that bring operational benefit into the control room through its xcDesktop and routing products, closely integrated with core systems such as the command and control applications.
Northgate plays a unique role in the delivery of efficient and effective public servic
