timclemans
timclemans on Hacker News
The department didn't get rid of me. They tried to keep me from resigning.
Calls are categorized by primary dispatchers. A Chief Dispatcher, the ones using this highlighting tool, used to ensure they saw messages they needed to see. The tool shows all messages at once whereas the tool they use right now can only show messages for one call at a time and doesn't highlight important ones.
I wasn't fired and wasn't asked to resign. SPD tried to keep me.
The Chief Information Officer at the time arranged the meeting to put structure around all this app development I was doing for 911: CAD remarks keyword highlighter, instant 911 call history, immediately show call out #s for a shooting etc (so dispatchers aren't leaving their desks to find the numbers in phone books), and TAC channel registration (again so they would leave their desk). It was the Captain that wouldn't go along with the Chief Information Officer was trying to accomplish.
The messages were by dispatchers. I'll give you an example, shortly after the center was no longer allowed to the app, someone called 911 and claimed his car had been shot. A dispatcher put it down as rock hit the car. A higher up told me that had my app been in used the Chief Dispatcher would have been alerted because they all had keywords for shot, shooting, etc. This is the only tool to see all messages for everything at once. I even asked them if they would like to hide messages and they said no.
I just added the MD5 checksum from AWS S3 to the email alerts for each linked "evidence".
I'm not looking to make a business of out this which is why I went with .org instead of .com. I'm looking to solve a major problem with sending photos/videos to police departments. I'm looking into chain of evidence now. Thank you for your helpful feedback.
Well if someone breaks into my home I want to send surveillance video to the police immediately so they can be looking for the perps.
Posted by
timclemans on Saturday August 29, 2015 @11:00PM
from the self-post dept.
Right now you can not easily send photos or videos to the police. The government has been trying for years now to make 911 handle photos and videos without much luck. Today I coded the ability to send photos and videos to the police. One goes to https://sendevidence.org and uploads their evidence. If the police department is in the database then they get an email with the data and links to S3...