Technology is advancing in the world and in policing like never before. Industrial technological advances show powerful potential to aid public safety efforts, but there is little time to study actual effects or vet the value and impact these tools might have upon public trust.

The variety of technology solutions available to law enforcement (and the risks if such tools are brought to market without proper vetting) are almost overwhelming—without the IACP Connector that is.

Agency leaders must regularly consider new technology in these times of low recruiting and high pressure, but due diligence in researching technology solutions, let alone developing policy and procedures to use such solutions, takes time and resources beyond what many agencies are willing to expend. Still, the need and pressure are to deliver better public safety services regardless of agency resources to study them, which is something delivered by the new IACP Connector.

Agency leaders need a research tool that will connect them with other agencies that have successfully discovered, reviewed, considered, and implemented new technologies—and have created policies to govern their use. The internet is of little help; public safety agencies are too aware of the online scrutiny of the criminal element, so their discoveries are kept close to the vest. They need a robust resource protected from the prying eyes of would-be offenders and undesirable others that has applicable, current, meaningful content and source references on a need-it-now basis. A resource protected by the IACP firewall on the IACP website and curated by IACP members.

The success of the IACP Connector relies on agencies contributing data. These contributions will help in fulfilling the premise and promise of the IACP Connector.

Yesterday’s public safety researchers did their primary jobs by making phone calls, searching the internet, and spending countless hours reviewing marketing materials for company after company, which may or may not yield a solution for their specific need. Having been in that position many times before, members of the IACP CJIS Committee dreamed of finding a better way.

What was created allows for easy, intuitive access to a searchable database containing a wide array of

• technology solutions for police—and the agencies that are using selected solutions;
• policies and procedures for using those solutions created by police agencies; and
• credible law enforcement and law enforcement–related contacts responsible for technology selection and deployment, including leaders, project managers, and selected industry providers.

The IACP Connector is not an academically imagined answer to the need. It is a concept borne out of the minds and experiences of people who have been there—in need of rapid access to good answers about urgent technology needs. The IACP Connector is a member-built and driven practical answer to the public safety research needs of today and into the future if members and agencies around the world will support it.

Easy, intuitive access means people from all positions in an agency can use the IACP Connector with confidence. They will find what they search for in one place and in a time frame that reduces days, weeks, and months of research to mere hours.

It is a searchable database that contains references to the deployment of technological solutions involving hardware and the software that drives hardware function.

Each technology entry, depending on the willingness and creativity of the submitters, can include information on the following:

• Real agencies deploying the technology to better serve their citizens.
• Real procurement documents so researchers won’t need to duplicate effort.
• Real policies and procedures in use and available for consideration and adaptation.
• Real people who will serve as credible professional sources and can discuss their research process, communicate best practices, identify challenges encountered along the way, relate surprise functionalities and limitations of the selected solutions, and identify the companies that offered to provide the needed technology.

Initial communication between public safety personnel is essential to fulfill the promise of the IACP Connector. Agency personnel confidentially discuss the most challenging issues with other agency personnel before ever visiting with a provider. That way the research agency can comfortably prepare to visit technologically savvy industry providers and be knowledgeable, competent, and up-to-speed on what the provider might be able to offer. Several different people need to “connect” to establish a comfort zone with the technology and potential vendors:

• Agency leaders can speak with the chief, director, or sheriff about issues important to them, such as privacy and data security, community engagement and trust, and agency morale before, during, and after solution deployment. It is also important they identify the effectiveness of the technology.
• The researcher should talk directly with the project manager, who is accountable for accomplishing the deployment and can share the boots-on-the-ground picture of the project from beginning to end, including lessons learned, best practices, and suggestions.
• Researchers will want to know from other references which industry provider responded to the need and which were selected to fill it.

There are some unique vendor-related IACP Connector benefits as well. The IACP Connector delivers access to a wide variety of vendors who self-report the technologies they offer and their contact information in a separate but still accessible database. This incentivizes industry providers to urge agencies that deploy their technologies to contribute to the IACP Connector database; it provides a no-cost, positive reference, which could be hard to come by in today’s busy business world. This also improves the potential of any conversation with an agency researcher. The call comes from the researcher to an aware and prepared representative, and both are able to be more open and candid when discussing the technology—a positive start to a potentially long and productive relationship.

The IACP technology committee chairs are beginning to realize the great value this tool can deliver to IACP members. New potential use cases arise in conversations among participants of every IACP-sanctioned event.

The IACP Connector is a new tool imagined by public safety people for public safety people to save time, give more return on investment for research time, and deliver capable trusted solutions to the benefit of the people who depend upon public safety to support their desire for an outstanding quality of life.d

Please cite as

IACP CJIS Committee, “Public Safety Needs… A Connector!,” Product Feature, Police Chief 92, no. 2 (February 2024): 56–57.