While the San Bernardino Police Department (SBPD) offered common services like record requests and crime mapping on the city website, they were difficult to find. Sometimes residents don’t speak the same “lingo” used by the PD or don’t use the exact terms for the search - making access to these services a challenge. PDs spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on services that save residents time and money. However, these services are often inconvenient for the public to use and require technical PD staff to administer. The lack of quick access to services ultimately costs police departments more money and time spent answering non-emergency 911 calls.

Like other departments, SBPD also wanted to improve its public reputation by giving residents more ways to be engaged not only with the department but also with their own safety. The department wanted to lessen its reliance on social media, which many residents choose not to use at all and where public feedback can quickly get out of hand. The PD was looking to proactively alert residents in real-time and by geographical-based districts across its ~65 square miles of jurisdiction. For example, the PD wanted to make it quick and easy to distribute public BOLOs or “Be On the Lookout” notifications which include license plate numbers or a picture of a suspicious person. By sharing this information with the public, the police department can communicate potential threats as well as enlist their help.

Because the PD operates programs involving residents and local businesses, a much-needed requirement was for a native-mobile calendar where residents can easily save events on their Apple or Android smartphones.

SBPD Interim Chief McBride: “Most people don’t have desktops anymore. Trying to run a desktop-based program on your phone doesn’t format well. We wanted to make the process simple, easy, and adaptive for people to make requests. It's just more efficient. People want to make a report and be done with it, without having to wait for a police officer.”

The RFP’s scope of work requirements included:

• The ability to publish public safety alerts and push real-time notifications (preferably to users in specific geographic boundaries) to application users;
• A page to highlight frequently asked questions and answers;
• An application capable of operation on both Android and IOS platforms;
• The capability for the PD administration to access, create, and alter content within the application along with the ability to manage user roles and permissions;
• Allow administrative users to construct a single social media post within the application that will format and publish those posts to the department’s various social media pages;