July 2008
Are You Meeting Your Citizens' Expectations?
Even in a robust economy, allocating limited resources is a difficult task. In a tight economy, it goes from difficult to critical. How will your agency maintain the balance of providing law enforcement services to your citizens without sacrificing quality? Recession proof your police department.
Corona Solutions' Staff Wizard® is the tool to help by showing how many patrol officers are needed to provide the level of service your citizens expect. Alternatively, it will show what level of service can be expected from any increased or decreased staffing levels as required by the current budget. Once staffing levels are set, the program will find the best deployment and schedule for those officers.
Agencies across the country are saving millions while improving police service levels! Learn more
Firefox® vs. Internet Explorer®
Corona Solutions decided to compare how the two most popular browsers perform while using our Staff Wizard program. After 7 trials on the same workflow, Firefox was about three times as fast as Internet Explorer. Note that the time for IE increases with every trial while Firefox remains consistent. This is due to differences in the architecture of the browsers.
| Trial # | Firefox | IE7 | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7.58 (sec) | 14.19 (sec) | 1.87 |
| 2 | 7.43 | 16.97 | 2.28 |
| 3 | 6.63 | 18.76 | 2.83 |
| 4 | 7.91 | 21.74 | 2.75 |
| 5 | 6.95 | 23.66 | 3.40 |
| 6 | 7.66 | 25.71 | 3.36 |
| 7 | 7.2 | 29.86 | 4.15 |
| Mean | 7.34 | 21.56 | 2.94 |
Tech Tip - CADmine® Drill-Down Search
CADmine's Drill-Down search is a valuable tool especially when you want to know what else is going on in a neighborhood. Include the criteria or parameters that you do know and CADmine will produce a list of incidents you may not have known. It will also map all of these incidents and include a quick link to more details on each.
Your agency's essential CAD data is at your fingertips. You no longer have to wait for needed information nor do you need to be a programmer to retrieve your data.
Your job is catching crooks; our job is helping you.
Congratulations!
Thanks to all who participated in last quarter's quiz Average Speed and congratulations to those who gave the correct answer!
- Mr. Ken Hailey, St. Louis Metropolitan Police
- Lieutenant Burke Farrah, Fresno Police Department
- Superintendent James O'Brien, Katherine Police Police Service
- Mr. Cameron Hopgood, Ottawa Police Service
- Mr. Christopher Schwartz, City of Layton
In case you missed it, here it is along with the answer:
Quiz - Average Speed
One of the Input Statistics in Staff Wizard is the average response speed calibration function. Whether you use our default numbers (validated by field tests), or the calibrated speed, or your own choice, it helps to understand something about "average speed".
Here is the question: All officers in the academy must qualify in pursuit driving on a one-mile closed course track. To qualify, they must make two laps averaging 60 miles per hour. Officer Recruit Fubar is trying to qualify. He has finished the first lap, but after a spinout and getting lost in the cone pattern, his average speed for the first lap was 30 mph. How fast does he need to drive on the second lap to qualify with the 60 mph average speed?
Here is the answer: If the average speed is to be 60 mph over the course of two laps, which totals two miles, he has two minutes to complete the course. Officer Recuruit Fubar travelled the first lap at 30 mph, which means he completed one mile in two minutes. His time is up! It is impossible for Officer Recruit Fubar to qualify with an average speed of 60 mph.
What Goes Where?
Staff Wizard® is happy to calculate just about whatever numbers you give it, but that does not mean you will be happy with the results it gives back. In this issue let's talk about what numbers go where in some of the Input Statistics to avoid unpleasant surprises. Or worse, deploying and scheduling your people based on invalid statistics.
Staff Wizard calculates time usage on the basis of 60 minutes per hour. Note that if you use shorter time periods of 30 or 15 minutes, the statistics are still based on "per hour" calculations. All time is assigned to one of three categories:
- CFS (Calls For Service) time
- Non-CFS (Non-Call For Service) time
- Uncommitted time
These are the default labels for the time categories, but you may be using different terms.
CFS time is intended for citizen-generated events. It is calculated from the number of calls, the number of units per call, and the amount of time consumed by each unit on calls.
Non-CFS is intended for work that makes a unit unavailable for being dispatched to a call, but is not CFS work. Here is where confusion often arises. Most users will assign time spent on unit-initiated activity in this category, along with time spent on administrative activites and lunch breaks. However, some users prefer not to assign self-initiated activities to this category, leaving the time to be grouped with the third category, Uncommitted Time.
Uncommitted Time is automatically calculated by subtracting CFS and Non-CFS time from 60. Another popular term for this time is "Proactive Patrol". Some people confuse uncommitted with idle, which is not correct.
Even though Staff Wizard will extract Non-CFS time from CADmine or Apollo, we do not recommend that you use those values in your analysis. That is historical data, and the numbers will tend to be higher during periods when units are not busy with CFS, so using these figures will be counterproductive in planning for the future. We recommend that you enter Non-CFS times (minutes/unit/hour) as you target for future operations. Then when Staff Wizard calculates the number of units needed to achieve your Operational Goals it will give you enough units to both handle the CFS and also handle the Non-CFS work.
There is no correct or standard level for any of the three categories of time. In the US many agencies seek to deploy to achieve 20 minutes per hour in each category. Others have the goal of 40% (24 minutes) for proactive patrol time.
In Staff Wizard, changing the Non-CFS inputs will have a major effect on unit requirements. Consider, for example, and input of 25 minutes for Non-CFS. Those 25 minutes are protected by Staff Wizard, leaving 35 minutes (60-25) per hour to handle all the CFS work. If you set a relatively high goal for Uncommitted Time of 20 minutes, then 45 minutes of the 60 minute hour are protected, leaving only 15 minutes to handle CFS. This may be perfectly appropriate for your operation, but we suggest you experiment with different Non-CFS and Uncommitted Time scenarios to find a realistic scenario.
Don't forget that you can set different Non-CFS time levels and Operational Goals for any time block in your workflow. If there are regular times during the week when you want to emphasize self-initiated activity, this is one way to make it achievable. Staff Wizard will help you manage your patrol operations so you are not forced simply to react.
Questions, Comments, Concerns...
If ever you have questions or comments regarding the content of Corona Quarterly or products by Corona Solutions, please contact us. Our knowledgable sales staff is trained to evaluate the needs of your agency and help determine the best solutions for you. If we're not able to provide the solution, we'll help you find someone who does. 888.450.9887 or Sales@CoronaSolutions.com.
