Krizia Mylonas, Vice President, Sales, VIQ Solutions
Law enforcement officials, investigators, and patrol officers often juggle documentation and reporting demands while balancing mission-critical tasks. The use of antiquated or manual incident report and dictation processes can cause officer fatigue, disrupt police transparency, and create safety risks.
For law enforcement professionals, dictation is a necessary and time-consuming task that is needed to create thorough, timely and accurate reporting of events. If you were to take an unofficial poll of working patrol officers, one of the most common afflictions among them would be writer’s cramp. Even the simplest “routine” report may take one hour or more to complete. With the increase in incidents and the need to provide an accurate account of what transpired, real-time dictation provides the ability to capture facts and details pertinent to the report without distraction.
Let’s cover the benefits of digitalized technology and dictation:
Transparency in policing
Accuracy is crucial to the reporting. Everything an incident report says can make a difference. With officers dictating in the moment, everything is fresh in their minds and more detailed and reliable than if that same information is pulled from memory hours later.
Officer Safety
The reliance on keyboard-driven, in-car systems, such as the Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) has impacted officer safety. The “heads down” approach during the reporting process has been known to allow for the officer to be put in compromising and unsafe situations. It’s always keen to allow officers to remain alert of their surroundings, hence using a mobile handheld dictation solution can increase safety.
Increase in Community Presence
Completing incident reports through mobile dictation is drastically faster than the time it would take an officer to reports and other transcripts, manually. Technology available today can be at least 98% accurate so officers don’t have to sacrifice critical details in order to gain back their time. In turn, officers spending less time at their desks buried in reporting means more time spent protecting their communities.
VIQ Solutions can help increase mobile dictation accuracy and provide your department with secure, cost efficient digitalized end-to-end solutions. Learn more about VIQ Solutions’ MobileMic Pro™ Dictation solution and its impact at the Nampa Police Department:
