Last month, Durham Constabulary recorded savings of £2 million as a result of efficiency savings generated by the implementation and continued usage of SentrySIS Police Perform.
Police Perform is a suite of applications provided by SentrySIS which enables officers to conduct essential policing tasks more efficiently — such as obtaining CCTV footage from local councils and conducting witness statements remotely.
Since its deployment in 2018, Durham Constabulary has saved the equivalent of one police officer working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 1,831 days in just time savings alone.
“The communities in which we operate are increasingly complex and diverse, therefore policing must evolve and adapt to ensure we continue to provide the best service for these communities,” said Durham Constabulary Detective Superintendent Kevin Weir. “By harnessing the SentrySIS technology to work smarter not harder, we have achieved significant cost and efficiency savings across the force and an improved service for victims of crime. The time savings from taking remote witness statements not only benefit Durham Constabulary, but other forces too, as their officers no longer need to travel to witnesses to take statements on our behalf.”
Officers also have the advantage of conducting MG11 witness statements with the public that can be taken and signed remotely from anywhere in the world. Providing the person giving the statement is not a vulnerable individual, is over 18 years of age and is not a victim of a serious offence, the platform is ideal to complete the statement taking process at speed.
The cloud-based platform—that is fully hosted, managed and developed in the U.K.—allows CCTV files to be sent securely to the police by providers such as local county councils who are responsible for public realm CCTV. This eliminates the need for police officers to physically travel to council offices to obtain footage on a disk to bring back to their respective stations for viewing.
National retailers such as Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Co-Op have all benefited from using the platform as they can now report crime directly online to Durham Constabulary via SentrySIS at no cost to them.
By using a simple form within the system, retailers can automatically produce an MG11 witness statement for shoplifting offences and transfer their in-store CCTV directly to the police in the form of an evidence pack. This saves store guards and loss prevention personal valuable time as they are not required to manually complete a witness statement in the presence of a police officer and can spend more time policing their shop floor.
Furthermore, officers are not required to attend a store location, as the system transfers all the required CCTV files and documentation needed for an investigation within around 15 minutes directly to the police. This means that police officer time can be redeployed to other front-line services.
“The platform has allowed us to work smarter and modernise and streamline the way we operate as a business, resulting in efficiency savings of £2 million for us, and an improved service for retailers and other victims of crime,” said Durham Constabulary Operational Lead PC Paul Vickers. “This is valuable time we can re-invest into investigations.“
Since its introduction, 7,618 pieces of CCTV footage have been transferred digitally via SentrySIS to Durham Constabulary and officers have taken over 21,700 statements from members of the public. Moreover, investigations at Durham Constabulary that leverage Police Perform are resolved on average 10 days faster than those which do not use the platform. Minor road traffic collisions can also be reported using SentrySIS, with 11,951 reported since its introduction.
Police Perform also helped Durham Constabulary cut down on fuel costs. “The savings we have achieved in fuel costs alone are significant, particularly in the current climate with the rising costs of energy and fuel,” said PC Vickers. “This alone has resulted in fuel savings of £540,000 and prevented 97,500 kilograms of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.”
“We are delighted that Police Perform is helping streamline operations at Durham Constabulary and producing savings of this magnitude,” said SentrySIS co-founder Chris Nriapia. “It is heartening to know that SentrySIS is helping save police time and money across Durham, so that the police can continue to do what they do best—keep our communities safe.”
Police constabularies who are looking to streamline their internal work processes can request a free online demonstration of SentrySIS Police Perform by contacting us.
To read more about the SentrySIS partnership with Durham Constabulary, please click here.