Motorola Solutions showcases portfolio enhancements at IACP

Motorola Solutions this week is displaying new products designed to enable LMR push-to-talk functionality to myriad mobile broadband devices, and to provide law enforcement with greater crime-fighting intelligence in real time, during the International of Association of Chief of Police (IACP) show in Philadelphia.

Motorola Solutions is featuring its Intelligent Data Discovery (IDD) service, which helps law enforcement quickly access data from multiple sources to identify crime trends, according to David Thomas, solutions vice president for Motorola Solutions.

“[IDD] is a great start to reaching our vision for a real-time crime center,” Thomas said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “We tend to concentrate a lot on all of the new data sources that you can pull into a real-time crime center. But, with our IDD, our goal is to actually harness data that customers already have and present it to them in a more actionable manner, whether it’s for commanders or officers.”

Ken Corney, police chief in Ventura, Calif., said his department has been using the IDD service for two months, and it has been very helpful with issues such as resource management.

“There isn’t an agency in California that hasn’t suffered from the economic downturn, and you have less crime-fighting resources out on the street,” Corney said during an interview. “You have less resources and less time for proactive patrols. If you’re just driving around, doing what officers do—the ‘It just doesn’t look right’ perspective—it’s good. But why not put that ‘It just doesn’t look right’ perspective in the areas where you’re seeing patterns of crimes.

“In a resource-needy environment, we’ve got to find ways to do better with less. Technology is going to be the foundation for how we’re going to meet success in the future.”

Staff members have been able to use IDD without significant training—“it’s pretty simplistic” to use—and the department has been able to integrate its functionality into day-to-day operations, Corney said.

Previously, crime statistics were reviewed only on a monthly or bi-weekly basis, so they had limited relevance, Corney said. With IDD, Ventura police personnel can access trends updated in real time, which is much more beneficial, he said.

“It was like we’re cooking with matches,” Corney said of the previous procedure. “The patrol officers know that we need to get on this stuff faster, and I think we’re going to see more effective results with this type of approach.

“What we’re able to see is that we’re actually putting real-time information and crime analysis into the hands of the boots on the ground. … “We can provide that information to our patrol officers on a shift-by-shift basis, rather than on a weekly or monthly meeting. This is much more relevant and much more actionable information, and it gives greater credibility to us assigning resources to hot spots or areas that we believe have a propensity for higher crime.”

The IDD service is commercially available immediately, according to Thomas.

Motorola also is announcing a unified push-to-talk (PTT) solution that will enable users of mobile broadband networks to speak with users on an Astro 25 network, according to Ali Kapadia, Motorola Solutions’ senior manager for North America business development.

“What unified PTT allows you to do is to leverage your Astro 25 network and bring on users that can be on a 3G network or a 4G public-safety LTE network, if applicable in the region,” Kapadia said during an interview. “They can utilize our LEX 700 LTE devices—or even a consumer-grade Android smartphone running the app—and the right [operating system] can now connect back into the LMR system to really have a voice session between the LMR world and the broadband world, whether it is 3G, 4G or public-safety LTE.”

Kapadia said the unified PTT capability is expected to be commercially available later this year.

In addition, Motorola Solutions is demonstrating at IACP—in a hypothetical bomb-threat scenario—how its VALR architecture can unify the communications needed for the response to such an incident, Kapadia said.

“We’re going to show this tight integration across all of the technologies in our portfolio, as well as some third-party [solutions], as well,” he said. “By unifying the data and sharing it across these mission-critical networks—whether it be broadband or LMR—we truly feel that we can provide better situational awareness for first responders, allow them to proceed with intelligence into any situation, and help them create safer cities and thriving communities.”